Cricket: Tour management burn-out worries for NZ Cricket

By RICHARD BOOCK

MugCaption1: John Reid

Body1: PAARL - New Zealand Cricket operations manager John Reid is concerned about a possible burn-out factor in the national team's management staff.

Reid has arrived in South Africa to assess the touring pressures on the New Zealand support team, who have been on the go since leaving for Australia and Singapore in mid-to-late August.

His brief is to speak with each member of the management team one to one to see what can be done to relieve the pressure from such a exhausting schedule.

"Many of these people are in completely different parts of their life-cycle than the players, with family responsibilities and so forth, and I can see a gradual disintegration of that group if we don't manage this carefully," he said.

"I'm not so much worried about losing the present bunch, but I'm concerned that if we keep going down this road there will be short-term appointments. People in and out, and quite a bit of reinvention of the wheel, which is far from ideal."

Reid said one of the solutions lay in playing less cricket and ruling out the one-off ODI tournaments.

Another lay in developing a management team who were interchangeable and flexible in terms of personnel and responsibilities.

Reid said the New Zealand side had probably reached saturation point in terms of playing cricket and could do without being involved in some of the secondary and opportunistic tournaments being staged around the world.

"I'm worried about the fact that management staff cannot continue in these sort of circumstances.

"I'm worried about the turnover rates, which go hand-in-hand with a loss of expertise, and I'm worried about the fact that they don't get paid as much as the players."

Lateral thinking was called for, he said, not only in respect of providing quality support for the New Zealand players, but in maintaining an informed and successful management staff.

Reid said he would not be involved in matters of selection in South Africa any more than he was at home.