The Pink Report

A Week Of It

In the context of New Zealand’s mining tragedy this hardly seems a week to be getting too upset about the cricket. Friends of mine come from Huntly coal mining families and I know their thoughts have been constantly with West Coasters, rather than trained on the happenings at Cobham Oval. Along with all other Plunket Shield teams in the country, the Knights soberly put on their black armbands on the third morning of round three and felt the sorrow as much as everyone else, then had to get on with trying to save face in a cricket match.

It’s been one of those weeks on the cricket field. The BLACKCAPS started it. Until the last test in Nagpur, they’d been holding up nicely against the world’s number one-ranked test cricket team. They’re not ranked in the top six, plus were coming off the ignominy of being whitewashed in a one-day series by Bangladesh. But once they fell to bits in the first innings at Nagpur, there was no way a team with as much class as India was going to let them get back up off the floor. One bad day at the office and the series was gone.

The mood was equally as quiet at Cobham Oval when the Knights walked back into their home team changing room to deal with the fact they’d just lost a four-day match to the Canterbury Wizards in a smidgen over two days. The collapse in each of the Knights innings had been so dramatic that the Wizards had only had to score 326 in their innings - healthy, but hardly titanic - to ultimately win by an innings and 114 runs. Ouch.

No team is immune to having a shocker and when they pop up, I always wonder two things. First, whether the batsmen’s nerves are contagious? If you’ve just watched four or five team-mates traipse back from the middle in the space of a session, on a pitch that hasn’t behaved as you’d expected, does a tiny veil of doubt drop down in front of the next batter’s eyes - enough to come between him and playing the ball naturally? And second, what does a team and coach do to ditch the embarrassment in time for the next match?

Apologising that it sounds a bit sadistic, Knights coach Grant Bradburn says he actually relishes the odd reality check like this. That’s because it’s in times of adversity that a good coach really kicks in.

“I think of myself as a coach of people, not a coach of cricket,” Grant explained. “Our job as coaches is to teach and to have a positive influence on people, and when adversity hits the players, it’s a time that they can learn and you grab that chance to highlight the learning opportunities.

“It’s an important time for a coach to reassure players (on an individual level mainly), to have a positive influence, and to help the team learn. We’re realistic as well and we don’t gloss over the fact that we played poorly, but we have a ‘growth mindset’. Early in the competition the players can learn from this experience, take the positives and move on.”

Remember that great Muhammad Ali quote? “Only a man who knows what it is like to be defeated can reach down to the bottom of his soul and come up with the extra ounce of power it takes to win when the match is even.”

OK, so meantime, while the umpire is raising his finger every 10 minutes, does it really mess with your head as you’re sitting there waiting to bat? Grant thinks there’s truth in that. Much as players try to stay firmly ‘in the zone’, it’s just human nature.

“Cricket is very much like that. It’s a mind game, it’s about confidence and, like it or not, when you’re waiting to bat and watching, it does have an effect on you - it really does take a skilful sportsman to stay in his own positive, impervious bubble. That’s why it’s such an intriguing game, isn’t it? It’s about momentum and pressure - and that’s a very powerful thing to hold as a side.”

The Knights now get released early for the weekend, reassembling on Sunday night for the build-up to their first Twenty20 game of the season. The shocker will be well behind them when they resume their Plunket Shield defence in February - and while the Wizards have now drawn level with them on the points table, at least neither has any team got a huge break on them after their two early wins.

Meantime, it’s a total change of style, scene and focus as we launch into the HRV Cup season on Thursday evening in Hamilton. In more ways than one, it’s reset time.