Crowe in to bat for new-look regime

MARTIN CROWE has removed himself from the Sky TV cricket commentary team to avoid a conflict of interest after agreeing to help national coach Mark Greatbatch as a batting adviser to some leading players.

"I will be helping Mark behind the scenes with one or two players and it's difficult to do both," Crowe told the Sunday Star-Times.

Crowe has been working with players such as Ross Taylor and Tim McIntosh as part of a scheme run by high-performance specialist Roger Mortimer in which players are encouraged to seek out their own coaches and mentors.

But under Greatbatch, Crowe's role will become more focused around preparing players for test cricket.

"It's nice to be asked, finally," Crowe said, referring to the fact New Zealand Cricket has not always been proactive in getting former greats involved.

"It's only for test matches and getting players up for test matches, including Ross Taylor and Tim McIntosh. Mark will guide me where he feels I can be of use."

Crowe said his job was not a formal arrangement. "It's not an appointment as such, but in my spare time away from the Rugby Channel I will do the odd bit helping our guys prepare for tests."

Crowe said he would focus on getting players to eliminate bad habits in order to bat for longer. "You have to be technically aware of what you need to do to stay in – that's the key to batting in test matches, staying in, which means eradicating ways of getting out, delaying your dismissal for as long as possible."

Crowe is good friends with Greatbatch as the pair played together at school, for Central Districts and for New Zealand, and he said that relationship was why he was now back involved.

"It just comes down to the people in the mix. When my brother [Jeff] was the manager I helped Nathan Astle and Stephen Fleming, but when John Bracewell came along that was the end of it."

Crowe also went into bat for a system that has placed a lot of power in the hands of captain Daniel Vettori.

"I'm a big believer that the captain has to be driving things. We've lost half a generation of test players, particularly in the batting area, because the coach [Bracewell] was everything. That's not the way cricket is designed."

Crowe said Bracewell's strong influence, especially over selection, created fear in the dressing room "and there was a huge fallout as a result".

"What they are doing now is just an open, transparent way to do things. The captain has to be accountable and has to bring out the best in his players on the field and Dan has a good grasp of that. It's just that over the past few years we'd got used to the coach driving everything.

"Paddy [Greatbatch] is a big believer in working behind the scenes because that was how he was brought up, so this set-up's got a good feeling to me."

Greatbatch said it was "really good" to have Crowe involved. "We've got an initial focus on the longer form of the game, which we need to do if we're going to get our test ranking up.

"Martin will be doing some hard yakka, talking about the game, talking about game-plans and goal-setting."

Greatbatch said John Wright would also have a hand in tutoring some of the Black Caps batsmen and pointed out that with Glenn Turner on the selection panel, the team's under-performing batting would hopefully be a thing of the past.

- © Fairfax NZ News