Significant changes to the role of New Zealand Cricket’s High Performance Centre at Lincoln University are part of the on-going development of that asset, and of the strategic plan under which the sport operates

Lynn McConnell11-Nov-2003Significant changes to the role of New Zealand Cricket’s High Performance Centre at Lincoln University are part of the on-going development of that asset, and of the strategic plan under which the sport operates.Martin Snedden, the chief executive of NZC, said feedback from an independent report done on the HPC was that there was insufficient integration between the Black Caps, the High Performance Centre and the first-class coaches, and he said changes that have been put in place will address this finding. While there would be more communication and involvement of coaches, such as that which has seen three of them, Bruce Blair (Northern Districts), Mark O’Donnell (Auckland) and Vaughn Johnson (Wellington) selected to take part in an assistant’s role on the tour of India and Pakistan, it was not intended that the structure result in a cloning of coaches.Snedden said it was a case of everyone going in the same direction but not necessarily thinking about doing things in the same way. “We don’t want to take individualism out of it,” he said.There would be a restructuring of the coaching education system developed by John Howell. This would now be divided between High Performance needs and the participation side of the game. As a result, Alec Astle’s development programme would be responsible for coaching education from the earliest stages through to Level Two.John F Reid would then be responsible for what happened after that point. There would also be more work done with the coaching directors from the Major Associations to improve the systems beyond that already in place. Howell had pulled together the bones of the coaching education over the last 10 years and now it was time to up the quality and deliver something much better, Snedden said.He said there had been a misconception, even among cricket people in New Zealand that the HPC and the Cricket Academy were one and the same thing. “The Academy is just one part of the HPC and we need to communicate that to make people aware,” he said.There had also been a look taken at where the Academy, and its philosophy, fitted into NZC’s overall pathway and what role NZC and the Major Associations would play in that. Snedden said there was a need to avoid centralisation although NZC wanted to ensure it maintained responsibility for the elite level players. But there was also a requirement for players to a pre-determined level to be the responsibility of the Majors.It was possible that it might be something like a mobile academy so that participants didn’t always have to go to Lincoln, and the academy could go out to the Majors. That would allow utilisation of facilities at a local level, while also avoiding the need to duplicate the resource that the HPC provides at the elite level.Up until the Under-17 level players were the responsibility of their Associations, and it was once taking part in that tournament that the talent identification started to take effect. It was after the Under-19 tournament level that NZC started to play a larger role in the development of players. NZC would have to make sure that the Majors could do the job.There would also be more focus in research and development, something that Snedden said New Zealand as a country had tended to shy away from. “Now we have to understand that if we are going to be innovative and create an edge over our opponents we have got to be prepared to do the research,” he said.