It's a coach's life

At the very moment of Australia's third defeat of the Chappell-Hadlee Trophy in Hamilton yesterday, the cameras panned - like the ghouls that they are - to the balcony of the visitors' dressing-room, where the coach, John Buchanan, was bookishly scribbling his final notes of a chastening trip across the Tasman. After the fortnight he has endured, the man they call Ned Flanders was probably just filling out a final string of ho-diddly-hums before dumping the entire portfolio in the shredder.

"The batting efforts of our opposition are not assisting the development of our bowlers' one-day skills," were just a few of the many words Buchanan had uttered at the midpoint of the CB Series, a long-forgotten era when Australia were lords of all they surveyed, and England and New Zealand were mere timorous serfs at the banquet. Six defeats have since followed from their last seven matches - Australia's worst run of ODI form in a decade - and it's safe to say those skills have now been tested to breaking point.

Hubris, they call it. Exaggerated pride or self-confidence, often resulting in fatal retribution. It was a crime in Ancient Greece, and it's still a crime in the eyes of Buchanan's critics, both at home and away. Shane Warne, who memorably suggested that the role of the coach was to drive the players from the hotel to the ground, this week elbowed his way to the head of a long queue of detractors, and pinned the blame for Australia's failings firmly on a man whom he believes has been a passenger throughout the team's unprecedented era of success.

Somewhere on the other side of the world, enjoying some family time in Cape Town no doubt, Duncan Fletcher will doubtless be permitting himself a wry grin at the chain of events of the past few days. Two weeks ago, there was only one international coach with his head in the crosswires, and it wasn't the man who had just delivered a 5-0 Ashes whitewashing in his final Test series. But then, at the eleventh hour of the tour, Fletcher spirited up some last-minute silverware to salvage his reputation, just as Buchanan steered his farewell cruise onto the rocks.

It's a coach's life. As a convoluted southern summer draws to a close, we're left to reflect on the successes and failures of two of the most dissimilar men of their genre - Buchanan the Nutty Professor and Fletcher the Inscrutable Seer, whose differing methods have been both utterly vindicated and hopelessly ridiculed this season, almost in the same breath.

Of the two, there is no doubt that Buchanan looks the most naked in defeat. He fell flat on his face after a solitary season at Middlesex in 1998 because none of the players could penetrate his corporate jargon, and in the 2005 Ashes he was ridiculed for having no answers when Australia's bowlers started malfunctioning. "Where is your bowling coach," everyone cried at Trent Bridge as no-ball followed no-ball and basic disciplines disappeared through the side door (The man they so needed, Troy Cooley, was in England's camp as it happens).

But perhaps that is exactly as it should be. A man should be at his most vulnerable when there is something to be vulnerable about, and in Buchanan's case that is, in fact, next to never. In his seven-year tenure, he has presided over an incredible 69 Test wins out of 90, and 24 series wins out of 28. Of the four rubbers that got away, only two ended up in outright defeat - and these were two of the greatest series of all time, against India in 2000-01 and, of course, the Ashes.

Of course, in an era where no team has come close to challenging Australia, Barney the Bear could probably have coached such superlative charges, but Buchanan has been on hand to provide the challenge himself. One day it's the witterings of Sun Tsu, the next it's a pre-Ashes boot camp in the Queensland jungle. Warne certainly wasn't convinced of his methods and nor, it would seem, was Ricky Ponting. In the wake of the Ashes whitewash, Ponting attempted to convey the gist of a team-talk that Buchanan had given during the Sydney Test, but admitted as his narrative tailed off that he had "probably been asleep for most of it".

But there is, of course, one final function of a coach, and arguably it is the most important of all. He is the team scapegoat, the man upon whom the brickbats rain down when the results start to go awry. Fletcher played this role to perfection when Nasser Hussain and Michael Vaughan were his captains, lurking in the shadows when the going was good but quick to step forward on his designated "Duncan Days". But having failed to forge the same bond when Andrew Flintoff was in charge, he abandoned his duty all too readily and left the captain to utter the same unconvincing platitudes day after day after day.

Buchanan is now also right in the firing line, and given the litany of injuries, retirements, paternity breaks and general weariness that is afflicting his team at present, he couldn't really be better positioned.

"The decision-making that accompanies being placed under the microscope of competition," was another thing that Buchanan wanted his bowlers to be tested on in these recent contests. Nathan Bracken, for one, is probably very grateful that everyone is still preoccupied with working out what this means.