Role of professional coaches in cricket overblown, says Shoaib Mohammad
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Shoaib Mohammad has lashed out at the professional coaches saying that their role in modern-day cricket is overrated and a majority of them were failures as players. While admitting that there were few exceptions, Mohammed added that top players have a better chance of being a good coach in cricket.
It has been a modern trend, probably one that has been adopted from football, that the teams are now more interested in hiring professional coaches, who have a degree in coaching. Micky Arther recently was under a lot of
âIf you look at the number of international coaches nowadays and those in the past, you will notice a majority of them were failures or average in their playing days. There are exceptions but the majority are failures as players,â Shoaib, who played 45 Tests for Pakistan, told âGTV newsâ.
âI think it is wrong to assume that if you have a coaching degree at any level you can be a good and successful coach. If a person has played
Arther has always been a strong believer of data analytics and checking the live numbers, but in the traditional coaching genre, this is an additional tool and never a primary one. Mohammed stated that nothing can beat the impact of a coach acquired by the physiological understanding of a playerâs mind.
âNo number of written words, software programs or simulations of a particular situation in a cricket match can replace the experience, vision and psychological understanding a professional top player has,â he said.
âHe is far more likely to succeed in helping groom and guide a player or help a player who is facing motivational or technical problems. A degree in coaching is helpful but only if you have played cricket at the highest level,â he added.
To validate his point, Mohammed cited the example that the great players like Hanif Muhammad, Sunil Gavaskar and Javed Miandad didnât have coaches, but they still succeeded in cricket thanks to great mentors.
âHow did players like Hanif Muhammad, Sunil Gavaskar or Javed Miandad pile up records without coaches? They didnât have coaches but they had mentors and that is what is needed in cricket.â
