Coaching
Cricket keeps handing its biggest coaching jobs to its biggest names
Stephen Fleming played 111 Tests for New Zealand, and in December he takes charge of England’s Test side. He arrives without ever having been head coach of a first-class side or a national team. Every match he has coached has been a T20 or a Hundred match, spread across the IPL, the Big Bash, the SA20, MLC and The Hundred itself. Whatever he knows about winning a five-day game, he learned out in the middle as a player. That Test career is the only red-ball cricket he brings into England’s dressing room.
That would look a stranger appointment if it were not so familiar. Fleming replaces Brendon McCullum, who played 101 Tests. India are led by Gautam Gambhir, Punjab Kings are coached by Ricky Ponting, and Royal Challengers won the last two IPL titles under Andy Flower. Cricket’s biggest jobs keep going to the big names, the men with 100 or more internationals behind them, like Fleming, Ponting, Mahela Jayawardene and Rahul Dravid. The habit is growing, too. In the IPL, coaches with 100 or more international caps led 54% of team-seasons from 2008 to 2017, and since 2018 they have led 74%.
Yet some of the most decorated coaches of the century came from nowhere near that background. John Buchanan played seven first-class matches before he coached Australia to the 2003 and 2007 World Cups. Trevor Bayliss never played an international, and he still won the 2019 World Cup with England and two IPL titles with Kolkata Knight Riders. Men like these put an awkward question to anyone hiring on the strength of a famous name: does a celebrated playing career actually help a side win?
Do big-name coaches win more IPL titles?
The case for the big names starts with the silverware, and at first glance it looks strong. Between them they have won 15 IPL titles since the league began in 2008. Two men account for most of that haul, with Fleming lifting five with Chennai and Jayawardene three with Mumbai Indians, and those trophies are what owners and fans remember when a famous name comes up for a job.
The trouble is that both men coached squads that were already strong. Given how good those sides had been in earlier IPL seasons, the big names’ teams won the title no more often than anyone else’s.
| Head coach | Coaches | Seasons | Won | Lost | Win % | Titles |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Big name (100+ caps) | 29 | 106 | 800 | 786 | 50.4 | 15 |
| Capped (1–99 caps) | 10 | 31 | 223 | 232 | 49.0 | 2 |
| Domestic pro | 3 | 17 | 130 | 125 | 51.0 | 2 |
| Career coach | 4 | 12 | 81 | 91 | 47.1 | 0 |
Bayliss belongs to a different breed of coach altogether: the domestic pros, men like him, Mickey Arthur and Peter Moores, who had long first-class careers without ever winning an international cap. That group has two IPL titles, and both are Bayliss’s, with Kolkata in 2012 and again in 2014. Beyond Fleming and Jayawardene, the famous names have won titles about as often as everybody else, and at the same franchises they have done no better than the coaches who came before or after them. Chennai and Mumbai made those coaches look exceptional at least as much as the coaches made Chennai and Mumbai.
Do big-name coaches do better in international cricket?
International cricket gives a better test, because there every kind of coach meets every other kind directly, and far more often than in a single franchise league. Across decided matches between Full Member men’s sides since 2000, Afghanistan aside, it comes down to a straight contest: whose sides beat what our ratings expected of them, and whose fell short?
Sides led by big names had a win rate 0.7 percentage points above what our ratings expected. The career coaches, men such as Mike Hesson, Russell Domingo and Rob Walter, who never played first-class cricket at all, and Shukri Conrad, who played 13 matches, beat expectations by exactly the same margin. Coaches who won between one and 99 caps, Tom Moody and Chandrakant Pandit among them, led sides whose win rate fell 1.2 percentage points short. No kind of coach stands out from the rest, and the famous names did no better than men who never played a first-class match.
| Head coach | Coaches | Decided matches | Won % | Expected % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Big name | 29 | 2,394 | 53.8 | 53.0 |
| Capped | 24 | 2,231 | 44.5 | 45.7 |
| Domestic pro | 6 | 1,050 | 55.8 | 54.0 |
| Career coach | 16 | 1,282 | 50.7 | 50.0 |
The individual stories run both ways in every group. Buchanan’s Australia won 77.2% of their decided matches when our ratings expected 65.1%, and England also finished well ahead of what was expected of them under both Andy Flower and McCullum. At the other end, Matthew Mott’s England, Pakistan under Waqar Younis and Ireland under Heinrich Malan all fell well short of what their squads promised. Good and poor coaches turn up in every group, whatever they did as players.
Nor do the big names own the big occasions. Of 24 ICC finals, big-name coaches won 9, in line with the 31% of matches they coached at those events. The other 15 were shared around, with Buchanan winning three, Andrew McDonald two, and Bayliss, Arthur and Conrad one each.
Which coaches beat expectations across the game?
The widest view takes in results since 2009 in internationals, the IPL, the CPL and domestic cricket in England, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and India, each set against the side’s chance of winning before the match. Across all of that cricket, the big names come out slightly behind.
| Head coach | Coaches | Matches | Won % | Market expected % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Big name | 83 | 5,982 | 50.8 | 51.4 |
| Capped | 102 | 6,038 | 50.0 | 49.6 |
| Domestic pro | 52 | 3,602 | 50.9 | 51.1 |
| Career coach | 50 | 2,647 | 51.0 | 49.8 |
Their sides won a little less often than their chances before the match suggested, while sides under career coaches won a little more, and in the end the career coaches finished 2.2 percentage points ahead of the big names. That edge is small, and it could easily be chance. What gives it any weight is how often it turns up: in internationals, in the IPL, and in domestic cricket in England, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.
It does not turn up everywhere, though. The CPL is a clear exception, and there the big names’ sides had much better results, with coaches such as Johan Botha, Lance Klusener and Phil Simmons leading sides that won 54.7% of their matches when they were expected to win 51.1%. The other franchise leagues, the Blast and England’s One-Day Cup lean neither way. A gap that reverses in one competition and vanishes in three more is no case for hiring career coaches over famous ones, only a reason to stop assuming the famous ones are better.
The best whole-career record of all belongs to a career coach. Conrad, who leads South Africa, has seen his sides win 62.9% of their decided matches when they were expected to win 49.9%. The clearest long record belongs to Adrian Birrell, who played 45 first-class matches and never an international. Across 284 matches, including stints at Hampshire and Sunrisers Eastern Cape, his sides kept on winning well beyond what was expected of them, by 9.1 percentage points.
Famous players have coached sides to every kind of result. Ashish Nehra and Ponting rank among the most successful coaches in the record, while David Hussey and Dwayne Bravo rank among the least. Fleming lands in the middle. Across his whole coaching career in the IPL, the Big Bash, the SA20, MLC and The Hundred, his sides did a little better than expected, enough to put him 52nd of the 124 coaches who have led sides in 50 or more matches. And a coach who beat expectations one year gave no hint that he would do it again the next.
Does white-ball coaching success carry over to Test cricket?
All of that concerns coaching in general. England’s question is narrower and harder, because Fleming is moving into a format he has never coached, and coaches who have made that move offer him little comfort. Forty-nine head coaches have at least 30 matches in each form of the game, and knowing how a coach did with the white ball told you next to nothing about how he would do with the red. Only 24 of the 49 finished above expectation in both forms or below it in both, which is about what you would get by tossing a coin.
Birrell is one of the few who did well in both, comfortably ahead of expectation whichever ball was in use. Fleming has nothing to set beside his franchise results, since he has never run a side in anything longer than a T20. For him that comparison cannot even begin until England take the field.
That turns the usual reading of his career on its head. His decade and more of white-ball success, the Chennai titles and the steady results above expectation, is the part of his record that tells England least about this job. And the part that stands out on his CV for a Test post, his career as a player, is a credential that has never separated the coaches who win from the coaches who lose.
Does a famous career make a better coach?
It does not. The IPL trophies flatter the big names because they took over strong squads. In international cricket, where every kind of coach meets every other, they did no better than men who never played first-class cricket. Across the wider game they fell slightly behind the career coaches, and the CPL is the only competition where they have come out clearly ahead.
Fleming’s first series makes a telling place to start. He meets Conrad’s South Africa, which sets the big name with no red-ball coaching record against a career coach who played 13 first-class matches and has the best whole-career record of any coach. If famous playing careers made better coaches, that is the contest where it ought to show.
None of this makes the appointment unreasonable. Fleming’s sides have done slightly better than expected across five competitions, he is a respected coach, and he may well prove a good fit for England. What nobody can point to is anything in his record that says he will succeed with a Test side. His franchise results belong to a different game, and his 111 Tests as a player, the only red-ball cricket he brings to the job, say no more about his coaching than any other famous career has said about any other coach. England have hired the famous name, and the record that would justify it does not exist yet.