The Scouting Network - England's new development system
Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2018 3:30 pm
Andrew Strauss yesterday announced the departure of head selector, James Whitaker, as part of a new outlook on player selection that he hopes will address what is becoming an ever growing problem of lack of county talent stepping up to the increased skill level of international cricket. Fraser or Newell will both, or at least one, leave their role as the number of additional selectors are reduced to a single role, one that is being advertised only to an independent candidate without links to a county side. While Whitaker's departure was the main talking point, the most important development for the future will be Strauss announcement that the selection pool will be supplemented by "at least a minimum of twelve scouts", who will be charged with the job of roaming the English cricket scene and sniffing out talent.
One might be able to see the possible benefit of having a huge army of scouts patrolling all games of cricket taking place during the summer, making sure that they are seeing first hand any players that might be of note, even if such a move might be total situational overkill. More cricket watched should lead to more understanding of what resources you have, which is fine if the time is used to make better judgement of players through consistent familiarity of his weakness and successes, but with a scout being present at every match, it seems an almost pointlessly extravagant exercise. Realistically, in an era of endless data collection and cameras filming matches, how many scouts are needed to trawl through the handful of new prospects that arent already on the radar? Arguably, at any given time there is only 2-3 prospects for elevation to the national team making strong cases at the same time, either through historical performance, as a key youth prospect with good performance, or through amazing form. And many of these might be players who came through player pathways at the ECB (and therefore should have dossiers bigger than the bible), played in A team tours, played in national teams before, or have been floating around long enough for at least some form of judgement to have been made.
It leaves a pertinent question of what exactly these scouts will be doing, and how will they exactly fit into the current system. Regardless of any potential benefit, one overriding problem that can be foreseen with such a wide and deep scouting network is, especially when their judgement are then post-filtered through all the relevant stakeholders in the system, how influential or useful are these reports produced going to be? The National selector, England selector, Head coach and captain of the national team, the national academy coach, all of their junior squad coaches; naturally, all of these will have their own opinion on who they want to work with, which players are involved, etc. Its arguable exactly what use adding a further element to this is going to be. Local academy's are small at each county, the amount of professional players in contention away from development teams also small. And those inside international or development squads are surely better judged by those who are spending time working on their development. It is really hard to see what unique voice these scouts can have.
Yet, I believe the clue as to England's intentions with this new model can be found in the movements that have quietly been made in recent times behind the scenes. It seems widely mentioned through various media channels, and by England's lead scout Mo Bobat who has been put in charge of talent spotting, that the ECB are moving towards a US sports based scouting output. For anyone not in tune with US sports scouting models, then its suffice to say generally that they are incredibly detailed systems that seek to produce scouting reports that assess a would be player on all aspects of their performance. It seems natural, maybe even sensible, that scouts would analyse to the nth degree the capacity in a players technical and mental make up in forming opinions at their suitability for stepping up to higher levels of competition, but the problem is that in acknowledging the use of such a system, one has to also acknowledge that they also have absolute insight into the all important formula of what makes a top player. Without knowing the over-riding "answer" then what exactly does the endless data mean?
Here lies the significant problem; if there was an unshakable science that had been proved to work, then everyone would be doing it. The fact is, there is no secret formula that works, and in pretending to do so all you are really succeeding in doing is isolating your field of scope to players who satisfy what you believe is the manifestation of the required skill.
Staying with the NFL, lets take the widely acknowledged best player of all time, Tom Brady. No one has won more superbowls. No one has more Most valuable players. No one is considered better by the majority of fans and pundits. As a young, baby faced rookie leaving college he turned up at the scouting combine to display his skills and take the relevant tests to rate him for possible NFL contracts; what was to follow is a stuff of legend. His 40 meter dash measuring his speed is rated as the worst in the modern era. His agility test was right down there with the worst ever. The topless photo taken to show his physicality went viral, not for displaying his ripped muscles, but because he looked like some dweeby Harry Potter lover who would be put in a coma by one tackle. He threw badly, he displayed no arm strength. His rookie report was savage; stay the f*ck away from this guy, hes a massive failure waiting to happen. He was picked 200th out of all players that season entering the draft. There is still a big viewing market of people doing the "normal guy v Tom Brady" Youtube videos where 40 a day chainsmoking 45 year olds regularly beat all of his physical results from the combine themselves.
He won the superbowl in his rookie year, thrust in as a sub when all of his teams QBs got injured long term. People could jump higher, were quicker and more agile, stronger, but it turned out no one quite had the desire to win, the ability to remain focused, the pure ice cool blood running through his veins when the chips were down, or the head strong one track mind of wanting to win at all costs; interestingly enough, his stubbornness and attitude was held against him in his scout report because, like almost all the time, it was interpreted very negatively, and not seen as a precursor for the passion to work hard or desire to win.
It makes me think of a hypothetical situation where by two notable 90s cricketers may turn up to a net session with a scout, and how any report might reflect on them. The first, Ramprakash, with his award winning dancing feet launching him into a range of sumptuous artsy drives, the second Steve Waugh with his punchy, slugger like quality, happy to edge every ball so long as it drops safe, or wear a bouncer rather than effortlessly dispatch it to the boundary. I think we all know who would make the cut on such aesthetic judgement, but then put one in a test match in front of Curtley and Walsh, Ramps would bat like Bambi on ice, while Steve would take on almost psychopathic levels of dedication to the cause. I wonder too what a scout would make of Steve Smith's technique. They would probably, like so many in US Sports, be dismissed as a player who struggles with the moving ball terribly, and he'd be seeing out his days flipping burgers without being given a chance. So, yeah, he struggles with the moving ball, but when it doesnt move hes scores 200 and wins a test match. Worth noting Steve Smith was scouted and elevated to International status as spin bowler who could just about hold a bat.
These are classic cases of how one can judge capacity of talent. What is talent? What is the formula for being a top test batsman? Are we to say a person who has brilliant technique, footwork, a range of shots is to be seen as better than a guy who has virtually no scoring options around the wicket, but can play a square cut when you over pitch, and who has such a solid defensive technique and concentration it takes 400 balls before he offers you a worthwhile chance? The assumption seems to be that players with a larger range of technique and cupboard of shots to fall back on while thrive more, but how many of these players have the necessary mentality? I personally think I could train anyone given enough hours to start to produce shots, I couldnt train a person at all to cope with the pressure of international cricket. There is a latent capacity that is simply unidentifiable, especially at younger ages, that has the largest governing part to end result.
The main concern though, is that these coaching systems that are the result of large scale scouting dont seem to acknowledge their own weaknesses; once you assume you know the answer to what makes a great player, and it turns out to be wrong, the question is not how to improve your own systems, the blame is simply dumped on the player in question not stepping up to the plate. Despite all the testing, observations and reports, the player simply didnt have it in them. This seems quite a contradictory conclusion, as surely if these tests were at all worthwhile in assessing capacity, they would weed out those people at an early time? Hearing Andy Flower recently say his Lions team simply didnt perform and didnt learn lessons; well, your testing and player pathway design actually claims to be able to identify and predict how these players can react or how much ability they have to learn, so how can you on one hand validate that policy while on the hand acknowledge virtually a whole squad displayed a wanton absence of such qualities when tested in a live environment?
For me, its pretty simple, and always will be. Players will be born with talent, they naturally filter up. No one needs a 114 page dossier listing how their cutting ability off the back foot operates on 17 different types of wickets, against every single type of pace, spin, seam etc. There is no answer, no over-riding formula, that explains a players ability better than their performance. If a player performs, then their lack of ability that you rate as terminal to their chances is obviously accounted for by a strength that manifests itself in another area. A player with no shots might bat with a dogged determinism. A player with all the shots not scoring loads of runs is probably lacking desire or concentration required. No amount of IQ tests, academic tests, net sessions or training camps in hot countries will ever change that.
Of course, that leaves the question of how people step up, but is that a question anyone can answer? I dont think you can. There is no test for judging if a player can stroll out and be natural, or display good judgement playing at the highest level, because nothing adequately simulates that amount of pressure or that feeling. Being given an international cap could daunt the best of technical batsman, could fire up a medium-fast bowler to stretch out a few extra mph they never had. It can go either way, so the only real judge is, "how does this guy do in other situations". Then its simply a case of judging how best to coach him, how does he react, what fires that person up. Its so subjective, you can pour petrol on a rule book and set fire to it. There is no objective rule to how to treat individuals to get the best out of them, people respond so differently, and react in such different ways. This is arguably why Flower's England always had a shelf life, and no great surprise his over managed ship sank in such catastrophic conditions.
I crave for a day where the national academy picks a squad for each youth age group based on feedback from counties own academy systems on who they recommend. For a Lions team to be picked on the second best 11 cricketers in the country on performance, with maybe 1 or 2 potential younger players. For a national team which is picked wholly on the basis of a selectors lone judgement witnessed with their own eyes, spending time judging players who are performing. All these massive scouting systems just seem to be a way of giving people who sell the idea of it as a science a way to waste resources and money.
Bobat loves American sports? I wonder if he ever read Moneyball....
One might be able to see the possible benefit of having a huge army of scouts patrolling all games of cricket taking place during the summer, making sure that they are seeing first hand any players that might be of note, even if such a move might be total situational overkill. More cricket watched should lead to more understanding of what resources you have, which is fine if the time is used to make better judgement of players through consistent familiarity of his weakness and successes, but with a scout being present at every match, it seems an almost pointlessly extravagant exercise. Realistically, in an era of endless data collection and cameras filming matches, how many scouts are needed to trawl through the handful of new prospects that arent already on the radar? Arguably, at any given time there is only 2-3 prospects for elevation to the national team making strong cases at the same time, either through historical performance, as a key youth prospect with good performance, or through amazing form. And many of these might be players who came through player pathways at the ECB (and therefore should have dossiers bigger than the bible), played in A team tours, played in national teams before, or have been floating around long enough for at least some form of judgement to have been made.
It leaves a pertinent question of what exactly these scouts will be doing, and how will they exactly fit into the current system. Regardless of any potential benefit, one overriding problem that can be foreseen with such a wide and deep scouting network is, especially when their judgement are then post-filtered through all the relevant stakeholders in the system, how influential or useful are these reports produced going to be? The National selector, England selector, Head coach and captain of the national team, the national academy coach, all of their junior squad coaches; naturally, all of these will have their own opinion on who they want to work with, which players are involved, etc. Its arguable exactly what use adding a further element to this is going to be. Local academy's are small at each county, the amount of professional players in contention away from development teams also small. And those inside international or development squads are surely better judged by those who are spending time working on their development. It is really hard to see what unique voice these scouts can have.
Yet, I believe the clue as to England's intentions with this new model can be found in the movements that have quietly been made in recent times behind the scenes. It seems widely mentioned through various media channels, and by England's lead scout Mo Bobat who has been put in charge of talent spotting, that the ECB are moving towards a US sports based scouting output. For anyone not in tune with US sports scouting models, then its suffice to say generally that they are incredibly detailed systems that seek to produce scouting reports that assess a would be player on all aspects of their performance. It seems natural, maybe even sensible, that scouts would analyse to the nth degree the capacity in a players technical and mental make up in forming opinions at their suitability for stepping up to higher levels of competition, but the problem is that in acknowledging the use of such a system, one has to also acknowledge that they also have absolute insight into the all important formula of what makes a top player. Without knowing the over-riding "answer" then what exactly does the endless data mean?
Here lies the significant problem; if there was an unshakable science that had been proved to work, then everyone would be doing it. The fact is, there is no secret formula that works, and in pretending to do so all you are really succeeding in doing is isolating your field of scope to players who satisfy what you believe is the manifestation of the required skill.
Staying with the NFL, lets take the widely acknowledged best player of all time, Tom Brady. No one has won more superbowls. No one has more Most valuable players. No one is considered better by the majority of fans and pundits. As a young, baby faced rookie leaving college he turned up at the scouting combine to display his skills and take the relevant tests to rate him for possible NFL contracts; what was to follow is a stuff of legend. His 40 meter dash measuring his speed is rated as the worst in the modern era. His agility test was right down there with the worst ever. The topless photo taken to show his physicality went viral, not for displaying his ripped muscles, but because he looked like some dweeby Harry Potter lover who would be put in a coma by one tackle. He threw badly, he displayed no arm strength. His rookie report was savage; stay the f*ck away from this guy, hes a massive failure waiting to happen. He was picked 200th out of all players that season entering the draft. There is still a big viewing market of people doing the "normal guy v Tom Brady" Youtube videos where 40 a day chainsmoking 45 year olds regularly beat all of his physical results from the combine themselves.
He won the superbowl in his rookie year, thrust in as a sub when all of his teams QBs got injured long term. People could jump higher, were quicker and more agile, stronger, but it turned out no one quite had the desire to win, the ability to remain focused, the pure ice cool blood running through his veins when the chips were down, or the head strong one track mind of wanting to win at all costs; interestingly enough, his stubbornness and attitude was held against him in his scout report because, like almost all the time, it was interpreted very negatively, and not seen as a precursor for the passion to work hard or desire to win.
It makes me think of a hypothetical situation where by two notable 90s cricketers may turn up to a net session with a scout, and how any report might reflect on them. The first, Ramprakash, with his award winning dancing feet launching him into a range of sumptuous artsy drives, the second Steve Waugh with his punchy, slugger like quality, happy to edge every ball so long as it drops safe, or wear a bouncer rather than effortlessly dispatch it to the boundary. I think we all know who would make the cut on such aesthetic judgement, but then put one in a test match in front of Curtley and Walsh, Ramps would bat like Bambi on ice, while Steve would take on almost psychopathic levels of dedication to the cause. I wonder too what a scout would make of Steve Smith's technique. They would probably, like so many in US Sports, be dismissed as a player who struggles with the moving ball terribly, and he'd be seeing out his days flipping burgers without being given a chance. So, yeah, he struggles with the moving ball, but when it doesnt move hes scores 200 and wins a test match. Worth noting Steve Smith was scouted and elevated to International status as spin bowler who could just about hold a bat.
These are classic cases of how one can judge capacity of talent. What is talent? What is the formula for being a top test batsman? Are we to say a person who has brilliant technique, footwork, a range of shots is to be seen as better than a guy who has virtually no scoring options around the wicket, but can play a square cut when you over pitch, and who has such a solid defensive technique and concentration it takes 400 balls before he offers you a worthwhile chance? The assumption seems to be that players with a larger range of technique and cupboard of shots to fall back on while thrive more, but how many of these players have the necessary mentality? I personally think I could train anyone given enough hours to start to produce shots, I couldnt train a person at all to cope with the pressure of international cricket. There is a latent capacity that is simply unidentifiable, especially at younger ages, that has the largest governing part to end result.
The main concern though, is that these coaching systems that are the result of large scale scouting dont seem to acknowledge their own weaknesses; once you assume you know the answer to what makes a great player, and it turns out to be wrong, the question is not how to improve your own systems, the blame is simply dumped on the player in question not stepping up to the plate. Despite all the testing, observations and reports, the player simply didnt have it in them. This seems quite a contradictory conclusion, as surely if these tests were at all worthwhile in assessing capacity, they would weed out those people at an early time? Hearing Andy Flower recently say his Lions team simply didnt perform and didnt learn lessons; well, your testing and player pathway design actually claims to be able to identify and predict how these players can react or how much ability they have to learn, so how can you on one hand validate that policy while on the hand acknowledge virtually a whole squad displayed a wanton absence of such qualities when tested in a live environment?
For me, its pretty simple, and always will be. Players will be born with talent, they naturally filter up. No one needs a 114 page dossier listing how their cutting ability off the back foot operates on 17 different types of wickets, against every single type of pace, spin, seam etc. There is no answer, no over-riding formula, that explains a players ability better than their performance. If a player performs, then their lack of ability that you rate as terminal to their chances is obviously accounted for by a strength that manifests itself in another area. A player with no shots might bat with a dogged determinism. A player with all the shots not scoring loads of runs is probably lacking desire or concentration required. No amount of IQ tests, academic tests, net sessions or training camps in hot countries will ever change that.
Of course, that leaves the question of how people step up, but is that a question anyone can answer? I dont think you can. There is no test for judging if a player can stroll out and be natural, or display good judgement playing at the highest level, because nothing adequately simulates that amount of pressure or that feeling. Being given an international cap could daunt the best of technical batsman, could fire up a medium-fast bowler to stretch out a few extra mph they never had. It can go either way, so the only real judge is, "how does this guy do in other situations". Then its simply a case of judging how best to coach him, how does he react, what fires that person up. Its so subjective, you can pour petrol on a rule book and set fire to it. There is no objective rule to how to treat individuals to get the best out of them, people respond so differently, and react in such different ways. This is arguably why Flower's England always had a shelf life, and no great surprise his over managed ship sank in such catastrophic conditions.
I crave for a day where the national academy picks a squad for each youth age group based on feedback from counties own academy systems on who they recommend. For a Lions team to be picked on the second best 11 cricketers in the country on performance, with maybe 1 or 2 potential younger players. For a national team which is picked wholly on the basis of a selectors lone judgement witnessed with their own eyes, spending time judging players who are performing. All these massive scouting systems just seem to be a way of giving people who sell the idea of it as a science a way to waste resources and money.
Bobat loves American sports? I wonder if he ever read Moneyball....