KEY POINTS:
The most important week in New Zealand's cricketing future is about to get under way.
Tomorrow in Christchurch, luminaries will gather to review the cricket season and begin to map out the game's immediate future. With a new chief executive in place and a coach's future to discuss, its importance cannot be underestimated.
While New Zealand Cricket high performance supremo Ric Charlesworth will drive the review, experts from outside the sport of cricket (such as Sparc's performance consultant for coaching Don Tricker) will be asked to provide ideas to drive cricket forward.
One of the ideas that will be placed on the table is to have separate coaches for the national one-day and test teams, an idea that must have its inspiration based on the tale of Hydra.
This idea was briefly bandied about before John Bracewell's appointment in the 2003-04 summer. Mercifully, it died a natural death then but it has been resuscitated in recent weeks.
Let's hope it has been included on the agenda for comedy value only. If someone is serious, let's count the ways in which it is stupid.
One, New Zealand has a small pool of quality players so the crossover between our test and one-day teams is still high. Why confuse essentially the same core of players with two different methods?
Two, one-day cricket has had a positive effect on the test game to the point where test cricket has become far more aggressive. In other words, it is not just the core players who are the same, but the core skills are almost indistinguishable now too.
Three, teams like to set a culture by which they live while together and the coach plays an enormous part in setting that culture. Will New Zealand now have separate 'cultures' for its one-day and test operations?
Four, a good working relationship between the coach and the manager is vital in successful teams. What if one coach has an issue with the manager? Do they then employ separate managers? Surely resources can be better spent.
Those are just the wider issues, it gets even trickier when you get to specifics.
Test cricket is surely the priority, so what if the test coach wants Shane Bond rested for the final two games of a one-day series but the one-day coach, wary of the fact his side could lose the series without his key bowler, rejects the suggestion?
Justin Vaughan has made just muted noises since his recent appointment as CEO. Even so, they have been the right ones.
"The World Cup outcome wasn't good enough. You don't go there just to hit your ranking," he said recently. "We can become No 1 or 2 in test cricket. There's no magic bullet for the Black Caps, but we won't achieve what we want until we have world champion players."
See that - no magic bullet.
New Zealand Cricket does not need radical solutions for simple problems. It just needs an environment where batsmen score runs, bowlers take wickets and fielders catch balls.
A two-headed beast is not the answer.
