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Title is not available Wisden CricInfo staff - January 1, 1998
moved into Victoria's all-time top ten runscorers.
His finest hour: Whatmore with the Sri Lankan team before the 1996 World Cup final at LahoreIn the meantime he had landed a desk job at the elegant VCA offices, just down the road from the MCG, where Frank Tyson was still in charge of the coaching. When Bill Lawry took over, the VCA said they would back Whatmore in his application for the job of head cricket coach at the new Victorian Institute of Sport. Here was as eye-opener. `I couldn't think laterally. I just told the boys to do what I had been coached to do when I was young. But after the morning sessions, when the boys went off to do their day jobs or whatever, I took my sandwiches and talked to the other coaches, men and women. There were a dozen major sports at the institute and 15 junior ones.' This was his school, the place where he learnt about the minds and bodies of sportsmen. `But I didn't have a team of my own, that was the frustration. The boys went off to play for their grade clubs on Saturdays.' He was therefore tempted when Mark Nicholas, during England's 1994–95 tour of Australia, asked him if he would like to coach Hampshire's 2nd XI; and more tempted still when, 24 hours later, a phone call asked him if he would like to coach Sri Lanka. SEVEN IN THE morning in Colombo. Heavy clouds threatening rain. The first day of training for the Sri Lankan squad under their new coach. The players, still the juniors of international cricket as they had been since their promotion in 1981, expected to be sent home as usual when the weather was bad. Whatmore dispatched them on three 15-minute runs; that afternoon, and for many to come, he drilled them for hours at fielding, as their batting and bowling skills did not have much room for improvement. He kept dividing his squad into two teams to compete against each other for fun. Arjuna Ranatunga, from his political power-base, and Aravinda de Silva, his well-travelled deputy, were citizens of the world and tough as other Test players, but the remainder evinced an inferiority complex. As Whatmore in his childhood had come from the same background, he was just the man to cure it. Sri Lanka came very close to not winning the World Cup in 1996. Whatmore took the squad to the swimming-pool at the Sinhalese Sports Club and told them to jump. Just in time he listened to the pleas of `please, sir, no':three-quarters of them couldn't swim. Soon most of them could, and run, and field, as he toughened slender physiques. He had also learnt that making players bat, bowl and field when physically tired is the nearest a coach can come to simulating the mental pressure of a big occasion: both circumstances make the heart pound faster, even when a batsman is the non-striker, according to recent research. One day he leaded his charges into a lorry, drove them down the coast and told them to run back to Colombo along the beach. Sounds a bit harsh, but it was necessary to strengthen their bodies and self-esteem; and Whatmore ran back with them. He was lucky to. When Sri Lanka toured Australia in 1995–96 they lost the series 3-0 but found an exceptional physiotherapist in Alex Kontoura. Soon he was able to tell Whatmore how long so-and-so would be able to bowl today without damage, or that so-and-so was best suited physically to fielding at gully and backward point. Then came the bomb-blast in Colombo on the eve of the World Cup, whose carnage persuaded Australia and West Indies to pull out of their qualifying games in Sri Lanka. `That united the nations,' Whatmore reflects now; and given this inner core of motivation, their effort began to snowball. They rushed past Kenya and Zimbabwe in Sri Lanka, not surprisingly, and – first alarm-bell – brushed aside India in Delhi. By the quarter-final, pitiful England were no match. It was not that England were not trying: it was that they were trying in completely the wrong way. On the day before their Faisalabad encounter the Sri Lankans went down to the ground and their batsmen had no more than a five-minute net in order to spare their bowlers. England went to a field next to their hotel and spent a boringly long time doing antiquated fielding exercises like catching easy skyers, rather than specific one-day drills like slicing the ball to the backward-point fielder. It was the same on match day, when Whatmore thought England looked tired rather than enthusiastic after their prolonged warm-up. The rest is history, as England soon were, with almost ten overs of Sri Lanka's reply to spare. It was the calmness with which Sri Lanka scored their runs to put the semi-final out of India's reach, and to finish off the final against Australia, which was most impressive. No hint of nerves at the novelty of it all, just strong purpose under pressure. For Whatmore, however, the end was nigh, as his Australian wife was finding the Sinhala language too difficult and could not settle in Colombo. AFTER ARRIVING in Lancashire, and finding the swimming-pool, Whatmore discovered there was a gap in cricket culture between Australia and England, as well as between Australia and Sri Lanka: but this time he did not have such a free hand to change things. Believing adamantly in the value of the best that medical science can offer, Whatmore struggled to come to terms with its absence from country cricket. He watched aghast as players warmed up in shorts, not tracksuits, on sunny days: the whole point is that you should be so warm and loose as to be sweating when you take the field, like Dennis Lillee. Even in the 1980s Lancashire, to save money, had a physio who did not arrive until one o'clock. When they heard the hour strike, the players used to tell each other: `You can get hit on the head now.' It is no secret that Lancashire's second-team players were pampered like nobody's business, and most of them were happy to stay that way – and in the second team. First-team players were content to exert themselves for a few games to win a one-day knockout pot, and soft-pedal the rest of the season. `You can't do that in four-day cricket,' says Whatmore. `For one thing, four days make up such a large part of your week.' Yes, it was quite a culture shock. Whatmore rates his finest achievements so far as the improvement in Lancashire's Championship cricket. Given his Australian-style belief in the value of technique, he has been a strong supporter of Matthew Wood as an opening batsman, `though he has plenty to learn'. He was also keen to promote Chris Schofield, as a more penetrative spinner than most at Old Trafford in recent seasons. `He would have played against Warwickshire in July but he had tonsillitis for a week and lost a stone, which he can't afford.' The England Under-19 legspinner was finally launched against Glamorgan at Colwyn Bay. To give them credit, Lancashire's administrators had already recognised the need for reform, and come up with a solution with which Whatmore eagerly agreed. For the first time in country cricket history the club contracted their players all the year round, not to sit at home in winter, but to work on their game and to `promote the development of the club', in the words of Dave Edmundson, their cricket secretary. The players now have to go out into their community, not stay in their own little world, and should become more mature people as well as cricketers. It is the way it should be: mens sana in corpore sano on and off the field. What more, so to speak, could you ask for?
Safe hands: one of Whatmore's record haul of catches for Victoria– England's James Whitaker in 1986–97.Sri Lanka came close to not winning the World Cup. Whatmore took the squad to the pool and told them to jump in. Just in time he found out that most of them couldn't swim
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