Notes on leaving the bench

The Mail on Sunday made a big fuss about Frank Lampard leaving the Chelsea bench after being an unused substitute in Chelsea's win over Swansea City at the weekend. All anyone knows - except, perhaps, Frank Lampard - is that with only minutes left in the match, the England midfielder walked down the player's race.

 Chances are that there was nothing in his actions; he thought it best to retreat to the rooms for treatment or something similar. It's been one of the most trying professional times for Lampard as he struggles with possible slips down the pecking order for club and country. A storm in china crockery of course, but if, just if, his actions were a protest at his removal from the Chelsea starting lineup - in which he's been a fixture since moving from West Ham - he's committed a protest of the immature and selfish.

courtesy: dailymail.co.uk

 A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, a former girlfriend of mine who played professional basketball told me how proud she was that she had quit the bench after being subbed in a big loss. I was astounded she'd done so; and asked how she'd react if a teammate had done likewise. She wasn't complimentary to this fictional teammate, only then realising that was how she was now perceived. She was so wrapped up in her own reality that the perceptions of her teammates didn't even register.


That explained a lot, because a lack of understanding about how teammates will react in certain situations indicates of a lack of team chemistry and that the needs of one are put above the needs of many. Sport is littered with similar examples, ranging from the Detroit Pistons' unnecessary player strike (the coach was going to be fired anyway) to citing examples of opponents failing to shake hands. As a player - or manager - your voice is important and, contrary to occasional opinion, heard. It's just not the only voice a coach has to listen to.

Teenagers see the importance of making regular statements - with clothes, music and in many other facets of life. Making statements just be heard, especially leaving the bench to make a protest, is a juvenile act made by people used to getting their own way. I don't believe Frank Lampard is one of those players; here's hoping he returns to the Chelsea side in coming weeks.

Make Ponting's punishment fit the crime

Ricky Ponting is Australia's least effective captain since Kim Hughes. He's in charge of a team finding it hard to match the achievements of his fallen comrades. He also is facing one of the worst form slumps of his career. As a leader of men he's mastered the art of using the right words with the wrong body language; his history is littered with animated - and public - disagreements with umpires and opposition. He is, quite simply, a bad loser.

But for the ICC to threaten to suspend him for damaging a television set after being dismissed against Zimbabwe is not a bridge, but a channel tunnel too far. Reports have the ICC charging the Australia captain with "abuse of ... ground equipment, fixtures or fittings during an international match". Allegedly, he threw his box when arriving back in the Australia dressing room after being dismissed by an outstanding direct hit from Chris Mpofu. It hit a television set, and damaged the picture control. There was no incident involving him smashing a television set with his bat despite earlier reports and his actions immediately after included volunteering to pay for any damage as well as notifying the Gujarat board of the incident.

Helen Keller knows that Ponting has a temper and struggles to control it, but we're hardly talking criminal offences here. Unlike past cases, where Ian Healy threw his bat into the change rooms, Hansie Cronje attacking an umpire's door with a stump or - apocryphally, anyway - Alan Border destroyed a change room after getting out, this was a private expression of frustration. And Ponting has tacitly admitted responsibility by offering payment for damages. That's also an expression of remorse.

You can't go around damaging fixtures, so some punishment should be doled out, but it's time for the ICC to act more like a responsible parent than a petty dictator: as the governing body proved when judging the accused Pakistani Spot-Fixers, each case should be judged on its own merits and in this case a suspension would be almost unbelievably harsh. In a climate of fear, perhaps Ponting would be punished harshly. In a climate of teaching the result should be simple reparations to the damaged property subtracted from his match fees. Because he has past offences also shouldn't register: although his lack of on-field restraint and this incident both stem from an apparent lack of maturity or self-control, they are completely different issues. And even though he's perhaps cricket's first modern-day recidivist captain, a suspension would be like jailing a person for their first speeding offence simply because they already have a rap for armed robbery.

If the ICC is the caring, sharing father figure it purports to be, justice will prevail and Ponting will be compelled to repay the costs of any damage done. If, as many suspect, the ICC bends to the whim of sensationalism, then Ponting will miss Australia's matches against New Zealand and Sri Lanka. It will be an interesting test case for the ICC.

Immaturity the reason for Spostra's strife?

Shoulder-gate! Spoelstra-watch! Player-only meetings! Other hyphenated phrases with exclamation marks! As the Miami Heat sunk to 9-8 for the season there has been an explosion of rumours concerning the team's happiness with Head Coach Eric Spoelstra. ESPN's Chris Broussard yesterday suggested the players were unhappy with the coach, feeling he was both underperforming and focused solely on keeping his job rather than on combining effectively the talent on hand.

This is after seventeen games of an eighty-two game regular season, and less than a quarter of a season into the New Miami Triumvirate's five-year reign on South Beach.

That a coach is facing a player revolt seventeen games into a five-year journey speaks volumes as to the mindset of his key men James, Wade & Bosh. Spoelstra is on a hiding to nothing - has been since The Decision, really - and now it's become public knowledge. By signing probably the best two free agents on last offseason's market and combining them with their own prize Wade, Miami were suddenly expected to win big now. That they then brought in a glue guy and a potential starting centre only increased expectations.

Unfortunately, the glue guy got hurt and the centre has sucked. The roster is mismatched: two elite players who both need the ball in their hands, a highly-paid big man who doesn't defend the rim, centre-by-platoon and point guards more at home in the Minor Leagues doesn't spell championship. The Heat have struggled against good teams as Chris Bosh has produced only the shadows of his Toronto Raptors form and Wade has struggled with injuries. Rumours of player discontent at their coach's man-management skills have gone beyond whispers creating the impression that the star players are looking for someone to blame. Perhaps the most damning indictment of the current Miami team is that no-one envies Spoelstra his job, not even Coaching Supremo Pat Riley who came out of retirement once before to relieve a head coach he thought was overwhelmed.

The easiest target is the coach: the man with the most thankless job in pro basketball today. Why thankless? Because should the Heat win public opinion will say it was due to their talent level and the coach got a free ride. Should they lose, the coach takes the fall because of that same talent, no matter how duplicitous. Spoelstra has the most to lose out of everyone around Heat because it's his job to combine the mismatched talent on hand and shape it into a winner. The old adage that it's easier to replace one coach than an entire team is particularly apposite here because once-in-a-generation players like LeBron come along less frequently than good coaches. The New Triumvirate have five-year, $90M+ contracts and an investment of that sort buys significant job security. Spoelstra was promoted from within and the investment in him is not nearly to the same level.

Player-coach meetings happen all the time. But reported "clear-the-air" talks between coach and star do not, which is why yesterday's pre-game chat between Spoelstra and LeBron was headline news. Afterwards, the coach said "There's an amount of healthy conflict within the team" and LeBron's take included the words "This is who we have". This came after last week's loss to Dallas where LeBron appeared to bump his coach. Neither statement even came close to saying "We've sorted whatever it was out" and the guess is that Spoelstra is now on borrowed time.

LeBron and Co. want to win now and for there to be no apology/explanation after a shoulder bump, player-only meetings and crisis talks means this smoke leads to a fire somewhere. If seventeen games into a season the players want their coach fired under these circumstances, it shows a remarkable degree of immaturity. Immaturity can be exemplified by any or all of impatience, shortsightedness, arrogance or an unwillingness to accept responsibility.

Red Flag One: Those seventeen games comprise 4% of their five-year term. Impatient? Check.

Red Flag Two: If they don't see the holes in their roster that are causing their failure to thrive then they may be guilty of shortsightedness. If they see those holes and think their extraordinary abilities can cover them then that's a degree of self-confidence bordering on Arrogant. Shortsighted? Arrogant? It's either one or the other.

Red Flag Three: Bosh isn't performing to his potential while LeBron and Wade seem at odds with being able to play together, settling into what looks very much to be a "My Turn, Your Turn" approach with which neither is comfortable. That they are ostensibly blaming the coach for their failure to gel together perfectly so early shows a degree of unwillingness to shoulder the responsibility. Avoiding responsibility? Probable check.

Or perhaps the coach does stink. But if so, surely that same self-confidence and talent could be used to prosper despite his inadequacy; or they would have chosen to sign for a better coach? It turns out the easiest target is also the guy with the hardest job: balancing the egos of superstars.

Kevin Pietersen simply tells us what we already know

The recent furore about Kevin Pietersen tweeting his disgust at being dropped for the oncoming One-day series says nothing more about Pietersen than what we already knew. What it does raise, however, is the burgeoning issue of appropriate use of social networking sites by cricketers, Twitter foremost among them.

The ECB has recently made moves to ban players from using the microblogging site, a move for control by a board unable to micromanage its playing staff as in days past. At the front of their minds must be the abusive tweet sent to a fan by paceman Tim Bresnan as well as Pietersen's outraged update at being “rested”. Gone are the days of a simple five-minute radio interview at the end of a day's play, now replaced by 24/7 access to the dressing room, long the most private area of any team's domain. To that extent, several leagues have legislated to stop players tweeting during matches or about in-game incidents.

This northern summer, KP's form has been patchy at best and he has stagnated as a batsman since the Moores crisis of early 2009. His batting, once powerful and expressive enough to command a place in any world cricket side, has reached the point where he's now convinced – like Matthew Hayden in his career twilight – that domination of a bowling attack comes down only to an aggressive state of mind rather than the combination of footwork, attitude and hard graft.

Of course Pietersen's antics shouldn't come as a surprise. He has ample experience at dealing with traditional media sources and must have known his Twitterrage would be reported yet still posted the message. This adds proof to the theory that most professional athletes react differently to disappointment than the rest of us. As an exceedingly small group, they are feted and praised beyond all recognition simply for their hand-eye co-ordination and as a result a healthy world-view is hard to maintain. These abilities are so desired that the media and fans have created this elite status where a blind eye can be turned consciously to an athlete's self-obsession, all because it's in everyone's best interest to see that athlete perform at their best.

If KP's Twitterburst came from a normal person it would be seen as immature. But we can't judge him in those terms because he's not a normal person. At least he doesn't consider himself normal because he's been told that's he's special by everyone since age twelve. One only has to see his posture at the crease to gain insight into how Pietersen views himself. Like anyone who is told something repetitively, Kevin has come to believe that he is special and that special people get what they want, whether that be a spot in the team, superior treatment in restaurants or a chance to voice their opinion, no matter how alternative, misguided or clinically insane.

Making (and recovering from) mistakes combined with good old-fashioned repetition forms the bedrock of learning. When it comes to cricket, Pietersen's talent has helped him make fewer mistakes than the norm. With a lack of negative reinforcement and only repetition – which in itself breeds obsession – from which to learn, could this be a key source of his skewed perspective? With a minimum of negative reinforcement, how could any of us have a well-adjusted world view?

How any player chooses to express himself is very much up to the individual. The proliferation of athletes regurgitating only cliche and optimism means it's safe to expect only platitudes from the age-old combination of player and microphone. Adding fuel to the fire is very rare now – especially since the retirement of noted agitators McGrath and Warne – but whenever a player steps out of line via Twitter he should as accountable for his words as he would be in any other public forum. Rather than a flat-ban, applying the simple “Would you say that to a microphone”? technique may be the best option. Social networking tools should be treated exactly the same as any other media outlet with anything published on these sites regarded as a public statement – vent, post, or blog at the player's own risk like the rest of us – and if an employer can catch a truant employee via a facebook update then the same rules must apply to athletes.

The ECB shouldn't, and probably legally can't, stop their cricketers from using these sites. Of pro athletes, the number of damaging tweets as a percentage of overall tweet numbers must be microscopic and rarely are any tweets revelatory. I mean, how often do you expect to hear a startling disclosure about anything in 140 characters or less? And combined with the unflappable boredom that makes up the current crop of world cricketers this issue suddenly becomes irrelevant. The domain of the pro athlete is no longer only the arena and has stretched into cyberspace: Twitter is an egotist's (and their agent's) wet dream because it allows everyone in the world free and unfettered access to “the brand”, in this case the most damaging batsman in World Cricket today.