A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest...

I must admit that my first reaction to the news that Australia had been bowled out for 47 in the second innings at Newlands was to clutch at the straw of vaguely remembered references to a ground in South Africa that was liable to tidal influence.

That's a suggestion that'll provoke a degree of scorn from anyone who hasn't been confronted with a seemingly placid surface that inexplicably starts doing something in a time frame that seems to coincide with high tide. We saw something like that at a schoolboys' carnival in Cairns back in 1982, and given the fact that recreation grounds are occasionally built over watercourses that may or may not be subject to tidal influences it mightn't be quite as silly as it sounds.

A quick Google around Capetown and high tide revealed times that may well have coincided with a late start and early wickets on day one and a flurry of nineteen wickets after lunch on day two.

Subsequent reading, however, suggests that we're talking ineptitude, poor shot selection and technical issues as much as a question mark over the tide, and reflection in the intervening period brought me back to a recurring theme when I look at Australian cricket, namely the interaction between elite players and the support personnel.

It seems to be, to borrow a phrase from a Paul Simon song, very much a case of A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.

Now, there have been any number of comments along the lines of Coach? Yeah, that's what the team uses to travel to the ground, but there's no doubt that when Bob Simpson was appointed to the role back in the mid-eighties there was a definite need for someone to sit over the top of the team in hard taskmaster mode.

In a situation where the Australian team needed to start winning, targetting the World Cup and the one day game was an obvious starting point, and World Cup success in 1987 morphed into a steady climb up the Test rankings that culminated in victory in the West Indies just under a decade later, and there was that memorable Ashes series in 1989 along the way.

There's no question that appointing Simpson to the role was a master stroke, but there were inherent risks in the concentration of power in one man's hands. Given the situation where the coach and technical advisor was also a selector you wouldn't be surprised to learn that batsmen with technical issues were wary of consulting too closely with the bloke who might decide they needed a spell from the team.

Coincidentally, along the way, Simpson's appointment coincided with the heyday of the National Coaching Accreditation Scheme, which provided an avenue for those of us with ambitions to coach with an avenue to gain formal qualifications.

Things may well have changed subsequently, but at that stage it was a case of four levels: Level 0, which equated to parent or teacher helping out at a local level; Level 1 theoretically qualified you to work up to State level; Level 2 was the minimum requirement for people looking after State teams, while Level 3 qualified you towork with national sides.

Initially, Levels 2 and 3 were largely the preserve of ex-players, usually players who'd gone close to the top level or had at least played A Grade cricket. It seemed to be a means to deliver a career path for guys whose playing days hadn't set them up with opportunities in later life or ex-players who wanted a continued involvement with the game.

As the accredited coaching fraternity proliferated new career paths opened, and we started to see people like John Buchanan and Bennett King being appointed as State coaches at Sheffield Shield level. Buchanan had a couple of Shield games for Queensland as a player, while King was a former A Grade Rugby League player.

I managed to pick up Level 1 accreditation, though it was soon obvious that (a) I wasn't going to be doing any coaching at senior levels (due to disinclination to offer advice to older blokes whose skills were far more developed than mine) and (b) I wasn't the best option available among my peers in the school cricket fraternity. Under those circumstances I was happy to go along helping out with School cricket up to NQ level, and to head away with the side as an extra member of the brains trust.

Those factors, however, meant that I was in contact with a number of people who had links to people a bit further up the pecking order, and the basis of this article lies in one of a number of conversations with the NQ-based Queensland Cricket Development Officer, who'd pass through town at least once a year, could generally be inveigled into coming down to cast an eye over my school cricket squad and was partial to a cool drink at the end of a hot day.

The particular conversation came shortly after the historic Sheffield Shield win in 1995, and with Queensland hosting the final for the first time it was a fairly obvious case of all hands on deck, so the coaching department had called in all the development officers. Hardly surprising under the circumstances.

What was slightly surprising was Bulls' coach Buchanan's decision to have the development officers conduct the final practice session before the big game, getting them to run the players through some of the drills they'd be using in their circuits around the schools and junior associations.

in itself it seemed like an interesting change of routine, though in Eric's account it seemed there was a general who the hell are these guys? attitude from the Bulls players, though they were apparently willing to show some respect for Bennett King based on his A Grade Rugby League days.

King, of course, went on to take over the Bulls when Buchanan got the national job, and went on to coach the West Indies, though there were issues with a team in decline and a cricket community that wasn't happy with an outsider as coach, particularly when he brought in Australian assistants.

A suggestion that elite athletes tend to be selective about who they listen to would hardly be described as earth-shattering news. In an environment where every Tom, Dick and Harry will be inclined to offer advice and/or opinions about form and technique that's understandable, but it does raise some interesting issues when we're talking about coaching and support staff.

After Bob Simpson was replaced as national coach Geoff Marsh was, as far as I can gather, a continuation of the same regime with some modification of the approach but a fair degree of continuity as one of the senior players moved into the coaching role.

The change to Buchanan, on the other hand, represented a significant departure from the way things had been done in the recent past, and there were interesting developments over the first part of the Buchanan era, particularly in the area of video analysis of the opposition and the appearance of specialist coaching assistants among the support staff.

The video analysis bit doesn't seem to be mentioned too much these days, but the specialist coaches are still there, and provide the basis for the man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest bit.

The first of them was Mike Young, the fielding specialist Buchanan hauled in from baseball. Coming from a non-cricketing background Young questioned traditional practices, and brought a new perspective that mightn't have totally revolutionized fielding but sharpened things significantly for a long while.

Inexplicably, on the verge of last year's Ashes debacle his involvement with the side was substantially diminished before he was eventually let go.

We've also had batting and bowling specialists, most recently Justin Langer in the batting department with Craig McDermott recently stepping into the bowling role, and it's there that the Man hears what he wants to hear bit really starts to kick in.

I'd been wondering what the hell was going on in the bowling department for a while now, and why Troy Cooley, the much vaunted mentor who allegedly shaped the England attack into an Ashes-winning outfit in 2005 didn't seem to be achieving the same results when he was back in the Australian fold.

Most particularly, our bowlers seemed totally unable to get the new ball to swing, largely because they didn't bowl the fuller length that would give the seam on the new ball time to do its thing. We didn't seem to be able to get it to reverse later on, either.

As far as I can see the art of fast bowling isn't exactly rocket science when it comes to rocketing them down with the new ball.

You want to get the batsman to play, particularly when there's shine and the possibility of swing. That means you need to be pitching the ball up around off stump or just outside it. There's a place for bowling a shorter length, sure, but it's largely a matter (at least in the early overs) of getting him to go back before you try to get him on the front foot edging to the slips, which in turn requires a line and length that invites him to drive if he's good enough.

McDermott's approach, as far as this article on Cricinfo suggests is based around a combination of the fittest attack in the world and a fuller length with swinging deliveries that will produce catches in the slips rather than the back-of-a-length approach that has been the vogue in recent years.

There's very little doubt that much of that back-of-a-length bit stems from the metronomic accuracy of Glenn McGrath, with a bit of hearkening back to the likes of Curtley Ambrose and Courtney Walsh. It's an approach that works well as part of an attack, but it's hardly the basis of a balanced attack in the long term.

McDermott has apparently asked for a change in the team's video analysis parameters, with the good and full lengths on the bowling graphics moving about a metre closer to the bat.  That's a fairly substantial modification and a significant move away from bowling dry (looking for bounce rather than swing, and relying on the batsman's impetuosity rather than the bowler's deception as the path to a swag of wickets).

That's not to suggest there's no place in the game for blokes who can bowl dry but you wouldn't want to be taking an all-dry attack into an environment where the bats are willing to play a waiting game on an unresponsive deck, would you?

No, from where I'm looking there seems to have been a fair bit of this is the way we do things (bowl dry, Mitchell Johnson's a match-winner, yada yada), the judge's decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into, thank you very much.

There's probably a bit of something similar going on with the batting at the moment.

There's no doubt that Justin Langer has been a very successful batsman, but, seriously, you'd have to question his contribution to the batting based on a string of low totals in the past twelve months. One can't help thinking that he's been brought on board because he's familiar with the way we do things and a good bloke to have around the outfit who won't rock the boat by asking too many difficult questions.

More particularly, he's going to show a bit of respect to blokes he used to be pretty close to.

Langer's spells in the ABC commentary box the summer before last seemed to be extremely respectful towards the people he was supposed to be advising, even suggesting a degree of awe in the presence of the great Mr Ponting, and this article where he insists Ponting must be kept in the Australian side, admits the former captain is feeling the pressure, suspects there might be profound technical issues with the batting and suggests the side may not have hit rock bottom yet seems to be more of the same.

Now, there's no question that Ponting and the rest of the top order are working solidly on tightening things up, but if there are technical issues lurking in there it may be a case of needing a bit of outside advice.

One also notes reports that National talent manager and full time selector, Greg Chappell had been banned from the dressing room while the team was batting during the last Ashes series.

Interesting.

Surely he wasn't having the temerity to point out technical aspects that were contributing to dismissals, something along the lines of Well, if you're going to do such and such, what do you expect?

After Capetown there's no doubt that we've got a long way to go, and it's to be hoped that the recent appointments to the selection panel (John Inverarity as chairman, Rod Marsh and Andy Bichel as part time selectors, coach TBA) won't always be telling people what they want to hear.

What they want to hear, of course, is you're in the side for the next game rather than this is what you need to be doing if you want to keep your place in the side. That's a message that the player might prefer not to hear, but one that needs to be delivered.

Once it has been, it's a message the player disregards at his own risk.