Mind games not cricket

Of all the misguided and half-baked schemes that the New Zealand cricket team have bought into over the past five or so years (and there's been a fair few of them, to be honest) the current peer-assessment procedure must surely rank as the loopiest.

This is the much-trumpeted forum that as told in Nathan Astle's just released autobiography includes a session in which each player has to leave the room while the rest of side break into groups and dream up adjectives to best describe him, and a few things they believe he should try to brush up on.

Apparently the brainchild of a former Australian school teacher, the supposed aim is to improve the relationship-dynamics between the players, therefore imbuing the squad with a greater sense of trust and, as a consequence, helping to achieve more success on the playing field. That's the aim, anyway.

However, if you talk to Astle who describes it as personality training (not a long way from attempted brain-washing) or any number of genuine conflict-management specialists, they'll tell you it's an astonishingly naive system, lacking in any academic appraisal and with the potential to cause more damage than benefit.

The use of group think-tanks (read lynch-mobs) to evaluate individuals, the unheard-of practice of allowing peers to label rather than observe behaviour (as in accusations of stubbornness, laziness or dishonesty), and the baffling decision to include management personnel in the process would all be laughed at by any serious purveyor of the industry.

With that in mind, it's hardly surprising that Astle listed this process of manipulation and all the other reviews and debriefs the players are now obliged to attend as one of the reasons he realised he wasn't enjoying the game anymore, and a major factor in his decision to retire suddenly last season, midway through the tri-series in Australia.

In a radio interview midweek he elaborated on his concerns, suggesting the peer assessment programme was an opportunity for people who had no expert knowledge of such a specialist area to mess with players' personalities, and to pass judgement on the basis of completely subjective interpretations.

New Zealand's most prolific ODI batsman revealed that the sessions sometimes became so small-minded and irrelevant that one player even found himself being told by the others to give up smoking cigarettes, in what sounded more like an amateurish intervention than anything nearing peer assessment.

Which just makes you wonder what's been going on within the team in recent years. It's as if the entire squad has been turned into a giant laboratory rat so that a pair of mad scientists (let's call them John Bracewell and Ric Charlesworth) can experiment freely with their latest hypotheses.

It was bad enough when we witnessed Kyle Mills being employed as a No3 batsman, Hamish Marshall being employed regardless of form or even the more-recently exposed initiative to keep the most senior players on edge a ruse that, incidentally, led to the premature retirements of both Astle and Chris Cairns.

But this is beyond the pale.

What does it matter if someone has an abrasive personality? Who cares if someone else is quiet and withdrawn, or if a team-mate is selfish and arrogant? We're not expecting them to win the Citizen of the Year Award, for goodness sake we just want them to be a successful cricket team.

You can only guess what some of Richard Hadlee's team-mates might have said about him during his playing years, and particularly after he announced his stance on keeping the "the car" as his player-of-the-series award. But in those days they were at least mature enough to cope with his foibles and still accept him for what he was the greatest bowler in the world.

It's true, Imran Khan was arrogant, Ian Botham was irresponsible and Javed Miandad was dangerously intemperate but I can't recall any complaints about the quality of their performance. Same goes for Shane Warne. He wouldn't have won any prizes for balanced thinking, but do you think his team-mates cared?

Maybe you only have these quack-fests when you have a struggling team.

Whatever the case, it's hardly comforting, is it? Here's an international cricket team that has no established opening batsmen, a top-order that's in a state of perilous decline and an ageing pace attack with no obvious back-up, and the powers-that-be are running around trying to analyse not skill levels, but personalities.

As Astle said this week, apart from the obvious questions about the relevance of such a programme, there were also concerns about its impact on new players to the side; in the sense that the rookies were already having to cope with an entirely foreign environment, and could do without the attentions of a posse of mind-readers.

He queried whether the information overload and unnecessary complication was affecting players such as batsman Ross Taylor, whose fortunes in the international arena have so far fluctuated, and also whether the initiative had assisted any individual in actually improving his form.

If you ask the Final Whistle (and admittedly, hardly anyone does) it would seem that, in their rush to adopt a best-practice policy for the team, management and possibly some senior players have overestimated their level of expertise, allowing themselves to be persuaded that the Emperor is indeed wearing a red sequined gown with matching gloves.

These oracles simply can't see that they're not only wasting their own time but the players' as well; that they risk marginalising those individuals (such as Astle) who have the good sense to rebel, and that what they're searching for is about as real as the Hogwarts' headmaster, Albus Dumbledore.

Sooner or later they're going to stumble on to the realisation that there is no key; that there's no secret recipe for success and that there's certainly no future in a programme that allows players to pigeon-hole other's behaviour.

Which is another way of saying, without having to put them to the trouble of a peer assessment, that they need their heads read.

- © Fairfax NZ News