Cricket Australia: Why Tim Paine is a 1986 version of Allan Border

It’s been 35 years since Australia hired its first national cricket coach yet the game is still working out who’s the boss writes Robert Craddock.

It’s 35 years since Australia hired its first national cricket coach yet the game is still working out who’s the boss.

Is it the captain or the coach?

When a team fails in rugby league or AFL it’s the coach who cops it first, last and deepest. Everyone accepts this.

But cricket is different.

Ian Chappell made an interesting point this week when he said that Tim Paine must make sure he is captaining the team on his terms because he is the one who copped the huge wallops of criticisms for the series loss to India.

Justin Langer may be the most powerful coach Australia has ever had - and the key policy maker running the team - but Paine will always cop more because cricket is viewed differently to the football codes.

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Ian Chappell has called on Tim Paine to make sure he is captaining Australia on his own terms. Picture: Getty Images.

No matter whether you have a coaching staff of 100 for your cricket team, in the public’s eyes, everything stops with the skipper.

So if you are the man with the “C’’ beside your name and you are going to go down, Chappell insists, at least go down on your terms.

The balance of power between Australian captains and coaches has changed with the differing nature of the personalities in the roles.

Exhausted from the burden of leading a struggling side, Allan Border willingly relinquished a lot of power to Australia‘s first (and perhaps best) coach Bob Simpson in 1986.

When the side rose in the water in the early 1990s Border would have liked to have taken power back but it was too late.

When Border retired in 1994 he advised Mark Taylor to take the lead role off Simpson and he duly did.

In some ways Paine‘s relationship with Langer is like Simpson’s with Border in 1986.

Given his heavy burden as a keeper and the dramatic way he was thrust into the job - tossed in mid-Test during the ball-tampering scandal - Paine simply had to lean heavily on Langer to be a standard setter and policy maker.

Also, the team needed a fresh voice from outside its own soiled bubble to move onwards and upwards and Langer, sturdy soul that he is, filled that role.

Tim Paine may be the captain, but he may be facing some undeserved criticism. Picture Getty Images.

Australia has had seven cricket coaches and Langer‘s powers exceed the other six and not simply because he is also a selector on a small three-man panel.

He came into the job with wide-ranging powers to upgrade Australia‘s cultural standards which descended to a grubby historical low during the ball tampering scandal.

When his term ends his legacy will be assessed on how the side has behaved as well as what they have achieved and there is no doubt the side‘s behaviour has improved on his watch.

The view that Langer is the side‘s key voice was reinforced by The Test documentary which contained footage of a post mortem to Australia’s shock loss to a Ben Stokes inspired England at Headingley in the 2019 Ashes.

The review was brutally direct and even Paine copped some rugged questions from the coach in the name of lancing the boil and moving on.

It is hard to picture former coach Geoff Marsh ever being as firm with say, Mark Taylor, or Tim Nielsen in his term with Ricky Ponting.

Langer has been admirably strong at times but losing the “unlosable‘’ series to India will chasten him.

The challenge for him is to find the balance between driving his team to peak performance and not overcooking them for the South African tour - if it happens - will be crammed with unseen stresses. 

Allan Border willingly relinquished a lot of power to Australia‘s first coach Bob Simpson in 1986. Picture: Supplied.

THE GOOD: The Big Bash. Against all expectations in a summer of travelling hubs, the T20 tournament has lifted a gear this season with tight finishes, decent decks and some eye-catching imports. For once, fans have not been moaning about it being too long.

THE BAD: rugby union’s obsession about deciding on what shade of gold to make its national jersey with the game’s “greatest thinkers’’ assembling at dinners in Sydney and Brisbane. Shame they couldn’t sort out the game’s convoluted rule book while they were there.
THE UGLY: The grim fight ahead for this year’s Tokyo Olympics. With the COVID curse ravaging national titles around the globe it will be difficult for many nations to assemble an Olympics team, never mind send them abroad.

Originally published as Cricket Australia: Why Tim Paine is a 1986 version of Allan Border