Stepping up
John Bracewell put the Glorious back into Gloster but left to coach his native New Zealand
John Bracewell put the Glorious back into Gloster but left to coach his native New Zealand. Rob Steen caught him before he got on the plane
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John Bracewell: a prophet with honour intact <© Getty Images |
Above the home dressing-room, a grave-looking Ray Illingworth and a frowning Darren Gough are holding an impromptu meeting of Moaners' Anonymous. Below, perched on a tarpaulin behind the bowler's arm, sits a tracksuited John Bracewell: the long, lean, occasionally mean hombre of a coach who put the Glorious back into Gloster. He is waiting for the last part of the jigsaw to slot into place before he returns home, a prophet with honour intact, to become coach of the New Zealand national team.
It means uprooting family again, although his son - who plays cricket for Gloucestershire Under-15 but may be better at rugby - is staying at boarding school here to do his GCSEs, a decision simplified by dad's return to Blighty next summer with the touring New Zealanders. "I think the time is right to challenge myself, to step up to the plate, to find out whether I can mix it at that level," says Bracewell. "And, unlike children, who fear the unknown, the unknown excites me."
He would not trade those six one-day pots in six seasons but winning a place in Division One of the Championship remained the only goal he had missed. Over the next 50-odd minutes, Yorkshire's late-season recruit Damien Martyn jogs the first lap of the second quickest double hundred on record. Not once, for all the heavily pregnant pauses as ball zips over parched outfield, does Bracewell's mood or even expression change. No exhortations, no whinges, no clenched fists or ground teeth: nothing. Three days later, with the visitors five down for 90-odd, the elements intervene. A draw ensues and Gloucestershire go up. Even Neptune is onside.
Far from anonymous, yet almost as far from famous, Bracewell would rather have been an All Black, or even a tearaway quick. Instead, he retrained that aggression - when your mother dies young and your sports-mad dad ensures that you and your four brothers inherit that passion, competitive instincts are virtually a given - to focus on off-spin and late middle-order defiance. His 41 Tests spanned the 1980s, the Kiwis' most fruitful era, and included two series wins (plus a one-off victory) against Australia as well as a record last-wicket stand. He also joined an elite brotherhood by doing the 1,000 runs-100 wickets double. Yet for all his achievement, he had always taken a distant back seat to that Hadlee chappie. These days, he rather likes being at the wheel.
He certainly did not get where he is today by getting carried away. "We [Gloucs] are a year behind where we should be," he states baldly. "Egos stopped us last year and you can't calculate that. The trouble was that the cricket business and the financial business didn't add up." Ask him to cite his proudest moment and even that comes wrapped in reality. "The first Cup final and the last one. We were so complete we ruined the Worcester game [2003 C&G final], according to the media. And it's a shame - what you're trying to do as a team, destroy the opposition, ruins the day. It's an unusual irony." For all the counter-claims of Sobers, Procter, Lloyd and Richards, there is a case for hailing Bracewell as the single most catalytic of all county imports. Before he shipped into Bristol in 1998, Gloucestershire had gone 21 years without a trophy. In the first 30 years of the Sunday League they lost more times - 81 more, to be precise - than the next least efficient team. Yet the next two seasons yielded five trophies, including an unprecedented Cup double, the first one-day treble and four consecutive displays of Lord's lordliness. The Gloster Chicken became a symbol of under-doggedness, of how wholes are more crucial than parts, how mind can triumph over matter, how games can be won by attacking fielding.
He regards the "good cop-bad cop" interpretation of his alliance with captain Mark Alleyne as "a bit flippant". But he admits that he has "tended to be the bearer of bad news and Mark is the onfield thinker, one of the most intelligent strategists around". Alleyne and Jack Russell, he says, "bought into" his vision then enthused the "optimists and pessimists". Kim Barnett, Ian Harvey, Jon Lewis, Jonty Rhodes, Mike Smith and Jeremy Snape all contributed manfully and artfully while Martyn Ball "brought optimism on to the field". For all the envy stirred by his salary, even those who fought against him during last year's ructions concede that none of all this would have been possible without John Garry Bracewell.
When Huw Richards interviewed Bracewell for The New Ball two years ago, he discovered an enthusiast "endowed with a sense of curiosity liable to have him reading seven books at once - and while three of these were on sports psychology, another was Tiger Woods' golf book and another was on Nostradamus - and a mental associativeness that can take an answer to one's questions in unexpected directions." All the same, while anything but reticent, he hesitates to say how he would change county cricket. No, he insists in a clipped but forceful manner, the programme is not too arduous. Promotion and relegation? "It's lifted the intensity but not necessarily the standard." Four-day games "just run their course - they don't help the development of captaincy or how to manoeuvre a game. A balance of threeand four-day cricket would be good, for spinners too."
What about the greatest advance since Lord Tesco bowled into Lord's? Hugh Morris's coaching reformation, culminating in the National Academy. "It's outstanding. He's thought about it, used the right things from other countries and adapted them. He's done a brilliant job integrating." Press him to be more prescriptive, however, and loyalty tugs. "I had lots of ideas when I first came and no ownership; now I've had real ownership, so you think about it that bit more, because you know how many people this can affect. I can give an opinion now, but with no ownership, and that's unfair ... " There is still a bee buzzing away under that bonnet. "Some of your heroes, former Test players who now have no ownership, don't put anything back except criticism. They're just prats. Once you're an All Black you're an All Black for life, a member of the brotherhood. If people had a more positive attitude, that would improve the self-esteem of the players, the self-belief would increase, and so the standard would increase. It's a logical thing, more than anything else."
He still has time for romance. "My romance with English cricket is still very much alive. In fact, I'm leaving with that more enhanced because it's a more realistic idea of what I dreamed of as a kid. When I was at school, an old umpire, who was a life member of Hampshire, asked whether I'd like to go over and trial for them when I left school. He wrote to them and they said yes but as a family we couldn't afford to get me there. But it was always in the back of my mind, a dream. I've had the opportunity to get somewhere with that dream. Marvellous. Not many people get to live their dreams."
Can Alleyne, Russell et al continue living theirs? "No reason why not. Everything that's in place should carry on. These guys know how to win." The man who taught them allows himself a thin smile. Unlike Mick and Keith, he has found satisfaction.
The November 2003 edition of The Wisden Cricketer is on sale at all good newsagents in the UK and Ireland, priced £3.25. Click here to subscribe.
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