Do England need a coach?

Shane Warne famously once said that the coach of a cricket team should be the person that drives the bus, nothing more. It is a view that, following the fallout between KP and PM, seems to be getting some wider traction in cricket circles.

So what is the point of a coach in cricket? Or, more importantly, what should the role of a coach be in any cricket side?

In my mind, the coach should be someone who monitors the individual performance of players in the team on a day to day / match basis. He (or she?) should be up there in the balcony with the bowling and batting coaches, often with a laptop, looking through the vital statistics of each player and offering advice to the captain if asked.

The role of John Buchanan is the successful Australian teams of a few years ago seems to bare this out. Whenever i looked up into the players section of any ground, he was always sat there in front of a PC, typing away and taking notes. Again, he may have had more input than this but the perception, at the least, was that he sat out of team meetings and did sweet FA.

With Moores, it appeared as though he wanted to get down to the nets everyday and generally make a nuisance of himself - a comment here and a comment there. Eventually, this has got to wear down on a captain, who wants to run the team his way. It happend with KP and who's to say that when Andrew "I'm a wealthy toff" Strauss moves on into the twilight, something like this won't happen again? If I were Andrew, I would be hating this tag of being referred to as a "safe pair of hands". That to me says brown nose all the way and mediocrity guaranteed in the future.

So what should England do? Well, as some are saying today, they should get rid of the coach. I suggest they keep the coach, but stick him well out of the way. Better seen and not heard.

But I could be wrong.

Wickman Junior