Can he play or not!

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browner
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Can he play or not!

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You've just finished the biggest game of your life. Still wearing the scars of battle, now imagine that instead of a pat on the back and an encouraging word, you're given a form to fill in, demanding you evaluate your own and your colleagues' performances.

This over-meddling over-professionalism, says former captain and superb batsman Martin Crowe, is what has been killing New Zealand's Test cricketers. 'You've got to allow them to be individual and self-sufficient. They're getting really confused.'

If Martin Crowe is right, professionalism in sport is in danger of becoming counterproductive. If we are made to fill out too many forms and jump over too many unchallenging hurdles, boredom replaces spontaneity. When sport and life get dull, we tend to find the level asked of us. How much do you like filling in forms?

The cult of feedback and questionnaires has ballooned, just as it has in every other professional walk of life. Just ask a teacher. Just ask a doctor or a social worker. There are forms for everything.

Alan Jones, who coached Australia to the rugby Grand Slam in 1984, believes 'the last thing English sport needs is even more people wandering around with clipboards.' Of course Mr. Jones is showing his age a bit. These days clipboards sound positively quaint, perhaps even retro. Only a laptop would do now.

A former county coach of mine used to go mad when he was given the England junior tour reports about his emerging players. 'Did he hydrate well in the mornings? Was he attentive in team meetings? But all I want to know is: can he play or not!'

I'm all for introducing scientific rigour into sport wherever possible. It would be mad not to. Modern training techniques have undoubtedly made players stronger, fitter and more powerful. Some areas of sport do suit quantitative analysis.

But data and measurements get us only so far – the human dimension never goes away. In our computer age, when information is getting easier, cheaper and more worthless by the minute, we should be wary of allowing ourselves to become slaves to what the computer tells us are 'the answers'. Systems shouldn't become a cop-out from judgements.

Strange as it may sound, 'professionalism' is sometimes the easy option. If you can't think of a good argument, you can always fall back on that good old chestnut, 'It will make us more professional.' Who would dare argue with that?

This is especially true in England, where there is a guilty hangover about the professional-amateur divide of the past. As if to make up for lost time, now we can't get enough of it. If you've already got two coaches, how about four? If you've got four, how about eight? In fact, why not sixteen coaches? It can only make us more professional.

Sometimes it shows in the wrong ways. If professional sportsmen feel bored, they can play bored. It isn't easy to keep that precious instinctiveness when you are bombarded with the clichés of professionalism. With every truism he hears – 'there's no "I" in team', 'the more you practise blah blah…' – an outstanding young player is dragged back another inch into the pack of mediocrity.

Some players need the space to develop and grow up as normal human beings. As an older player, sometimes I wondered whether a young cricketer might consider a winter job in the outside world – it might refresh his love of cricket. One such player argued he wouldn't have time to go to the gym if he also had a winter job. Well, if Barack Obama can work out every day, it can't be too hard.

This particular bowler quit the professional game in the middle of a season, but once back in club cricket bowled better than ever. 'Shame I can't have another go now', he told me. 'Cricket doesn't weigh so heavily on me these days, so I've recaptured my rhythm.'

Paradoxically, if he had got the non-cricketing strands of his life sorted out earlier he could have carried on being paid to play sport.

The underlying problem is deeper still. Professionalism has made people obsessed with evidence of endeavour. To some professionals, justifying their jobs can become as important as being good at them. Hence the obsession with those 'achievements' – hours logged, sessions completed, commitments 'signed off' on – which look good on headed notepaper and can be shown off at meetings. But does anyone ask if they are actually working?

That is what Martin Crowe was hinting at in his attack on form-filling. Professional 'process' can mask an institutionalised retreat from good judgement – and one of the most important judgements is how to allow people to stay instinctive and individual.

Has professionalism become a comfort blanket that is now smothering us? Perhaps it's time to focus less on systems, the boxes ticked and the mundane miles trotted in the treadmills of our minds, and more on what matters and what works. In fact, anything less could be simply unprofessional.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/rugbyu ... sport.html
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