UNDER PRESSURE

We tend to lump sports coaches into one of two categories: winners or losers, maestros or muppets, catalysts or cone people.

Before an England-India game at Lord’s in 2002, former New Zealand cricket captain John Wright, the first foreigner to coach the Indian men’s team, ran into celebrated lyricist Sir Tim Rice, then MCC president, and his secretary. The latter asked what Wright actually did. Rice provided an answer: “He’s the man who puts the [fielding drills] cones out, then brings them in just before play starts.”

This binary view stems from seemingly contradictory phenomena. There’s the seldom-resisted urge to mythologise successful coaches, to portray them as chess masters and their players as mere pawns. And, paradoxically, there’s the fact that coaches are always being sacked.

Sacking the coach of a non-performing team is often the easy option, but it’s also the practical one: if the pressure is on team bosses