DESPITE criticisms about a seemingly simplistic style of coaching on the ill-starred tour of South Africa, West Indies’ cricket coach Gus Logie is standing firm.
Speaking at Grantley Adams International Airport after the West Indies team returned to the Caribbean on Friday, Logie said he had his own philosophy about coaching, and a vision for the team.
“I find it very difficult for people to want you to be in the mould of X, Y or Z and that’s not me,” Logie told the Saturday SUN.
“I have my philosophy about coaching and at the end of the day people outside will look at it and they have their own reservations, and their own opinions but I cannot be swayed by everybody’s opinions about what a coach should be like,” Logie declared.
“I think we need to be conscious about who we are and what we are about. We have a vision for the team and we are pursuing that vision as forthrightly as possible,” Logie contended.
He made it clear that there are different ways to get a message across without having to “quarrel with or embarrass a player.”
“I don’t see that as coaching. I believe that people can understand but, yes, there are times when you have got to be up in people’s ears and say exactly a few things to them that are unacceptable in a team scenario as well as individually,” he remarked.
He admitted there were times he had to pull players aside and speak to them individually, making them understand what their roles were in the team.
“At the end of the day, there are styles that are different. Sometimes you have to be a big brother to a player, sometimes you have to be a psychologist to a player, sometimes you need to put a hand around the shoulder of a player and comfort a player.
“Sometimes you need to tell a player, ‘look you know you are not pulling your socks up’ but at the end of the day, it is how you do it, when you do it and why you do it,” he said.
“I don’t think that it is a situation across the board that you have to be rough and tough to be able to get players to understand and respect what’s happening,” added Logie.
He also defended the West Indies training sessions which some commentators in South Africa said lacked intensity.
“Our style has never been the rough and tumble style as the South Africans or the Australians, so why do we want to follow those styles? We have our own method of doing things. At the end of the day, we go out and take it as serious as we can,” Logie said.
“If you are having sessions that were not of any intensity, I find it difficult that players could be producing the kind of scores as they were,” Logie said.
“One of the things about it is that we seem to want to imitate everybody else. Whatever someone does, we want to then follow suit. Everything that is said from the outside is gospel,” he said.
Logie said there were many former cricketers who had done well for the West Indies and were more knowledgeable about “our game in the Caribbean” who could pass on advice.
“We need to trust them and believe in them instead of listening to everything that comes from outside. We seem to be mimic men in those instances,” Logie charged.
“Whatever detractors there are out there, we’ve had great players in the past who were coaches. They themselves had their own philosophy and many of the results you got were just as disappointing.
The former Trinidad and Tobago captain and West Indies middle-order batsman conceded the West Indies “were not as quick as the South Africans” but attributed this to injuries.
“They were a lot fitter and stronger than we in the series and their (training) sessions could go on for a lot longer. We had quite a few injuries.
“We had players who were injured and were suffering with one ailment or the other so it was always difficult to push people who were injured or push people sometimes who were not as fit as they would like to be,” he argued.
He said the tour, despite a 3-0 loss in the Test series and 3-1 in the One-Day Internationals, showed the Windies were capable of competing at that level.
“We went out there and proved that we can compete. When you look at the kind of scores that we had as individual players, it certainly augurs well for the future,” he added.
“We’ve had previous tours when players were not getting any runs whatsoever. We won a first-class game for the first time in South Africa. Guys scored double hundreds, hundreds and the consistency was always there,” he said. (Extracted from Barbados Nation).