Team managers have an extremely important role in ensuring the successful management of the team and the welfare of the athletes in their care. They offer invaluable assistance to players and parents by taking care of administrative responsibilities for the coach – which allows the coach to focus on coaching.
However, the pair of managers in Omar Khan and Colin Borde from T&T, have shown that there is a changing role in the importance of cricket managers and this has put them head and shoulders above the rest in the Caribbean.
Long gone are the days when managers just took care of logistics around the cricket. Both Khan and Borde have taken it to a new level with the duo bringing in the mental aspect of the game into focus.
Early in his career as a manager, Khan stated that for a player to give his best, he must be comfortable. He said that every player must be treated differently. Back in 2010 at the ICC Youth World Cup in South Africa, Khan stepped out of his role of taking care of logistics to motivate players.
Then, a West Indies team was selected which included current West Indies Test captain Jason Holder, Shane Dowrich, Kraigg Brathwaite, John Campbell, and Jermaine Blackwood and off they went to New Zealand for the tournament.
Given no real chance of making it far and no great expectation from even the West Indies board at the time, Khan decided to work on the players mentally. He decided to 'man-manage' each player individually to find out what made each click and even offered incentives out of his pocket for the players. Lo and behold, they started to look like a different unit and found themselves in the semi-finals of the tournament.
This gave Khan confidence that his methods were working and even before this when he managed the West Indies team for a period, it was a successful stint amid a poor run.
Today, he is preferred around the region and has been the manager of the Guyana Amazon Warriors since the inception of the Hero Caribbean Premier League (CPL) in 2013. His fondest memories though is taking T&T through their most successful stint in the history of regional cricket. During the period, 2006-2008, T&T won almost everything before them, including the Stanford T20, and went on to play at the Champions League T20 (Twenty20) Tournament on five occasions.
Khan’s method has been one of instilling business values into players.
“From very early on I have made it clear to all the players, I manage, that sport is big business. It is akin to going to work where you prepare well, be disciplined, show respect and most of all give of your best. You can’t beat professionalism and players under my watch know how dearly I hold to that,” said Khan.
“Another very key aspect is the fact that you have to make the environment conducive to production. You want to make your players as comfortable as possible, gain their trust and they will perform at their best most times.”
Also showing that he is cut from a very classy cloth when it comes to cricket managers is Borde, manager of the Trinbago Knight Riders (TKR). Borde is the most successful manager in the history of the CPL with three titles. He won his first title under the T&T Red Steel banner and then followed-up with titles won by TKR in 2017 and 2018. Last year his team lost at the semi-final stage.
Borde has been another manager who gets into the ear of the players. He compliments the coaches as well, just like Khan as they worked in tandem to get the best out of the players.
On several occasions Borde could be seen taking players aside, giving advice, and even keeping secrets. He believes that the role of a manager is that of a father figure and once a player is shown that someone is standing for them, they will perform at their best.
Borde’s ability has been recognised outside the region and he has been a feature at the GT20 in Canada, where he was task with being the over-arching manager of all six managers for the 2018 season. Such is the respect he has built up over the last few years. When he managed the Montreal Tigers last year, he became the first local to manage a team in a foreign franchise. He has worked with the likes of Waqar Younis, Steve Smith, Tom Moody, David Warner, and Lasith Malinga.
“Be patient with players, understand that you are the bridge between the commercial, political, marketing forces and the players. You must create an environment that is conducive to learning. Trust in the process of self-development through discipline and self-governance will prevail,” said Borde on his method.
In the early days of West Indies cricket, there were no coaches, and managers had to assist the captains in whatever they needed. West Indies cricket has had managers like Wes Hall, Deryck Murray, Ramcharitar Rickhi, Joel Garner, Rawle Lewis, current Cricket West Indies president Ricky Skerritt, Richie Richardson, David Holford, Clive Lloyd, Bryan Davis, Sir Clyde Walcott, Berkerley Gaskin, and Sir Frank Worrell.
They all had their unique styles and would have managed in different eras when a different approach would have been needed to get the best out of the West Indies cricketers.
To compare them all in one pool would be impossible because there might have been different issues to deal with at the various times. Some managers had to deal with Kerry Packer defections, some had to deal with player-rebellion. Some would have had to take players to certain parts of the world, where politics and other issues might have called on them to act in a certain way.
So it is difficult to judge the best among them but given what we would have had over the last decade in West Indies and regional cricket, one is forced to look in the direction of Khan and Borde as to men at the top of the heap when it comes to managing players.