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‘Treat people like adults, not school kids’

Former England batsman Geoffrey Boycott on Thursday criticised Australian coach Mickey Arthur for treating the players like ‘school children’ and said he finds the idea of setting the cricketers written tasks as ‘childlike’.

Australia had sacked four players, including vice-captain Shane Watson, for the third Test against India after the cricketers failed to prepare a three-point presentation on how they could improve the team's performance following their defeats in Chennai and Hyderabad in the first two Tests.

Boycott said Arthur could have spoken to the players in private rather than behaving like a ‘teacher’.

‘It's like being schoolchildren and giving them something to do and if they don't do it, then just slapping them. If you feel that there is an area where they should improve, surely it is up to the coaching staff and the major coach himself, Arthur, to talk to them in private,’ he said.

‘I always thought that's what a coach's job was. I don't like the coach-manager, you're like a teacher,’ Boycott said.  The 72-year-old former cricketer said as a coach, he would have tried to help the players with a friendly chat rather than asking them to prepare presentations.

‘I would never play around with their technique or anything, but I would talk to them, I would watch them, and I would give them a bit of advice as to where they might improve. I would think that was my job,’ he said.

‘And if I needed to talk to them about the mental attitude to batting and bowling, that again is my job through my experience and my maturity. But I don't think I should be setting them paper exams to ask them to write down what they think’, he said. AGENCIES


WATTO’S WIFE DELIVERS BOY,

Sacked Australian vice-captain Shane Watson’s wife was blessed with a baby boy, raising the possibility of his return to India in time for the fourth Test starting next week. Barely three days after Watson returned home from India under dramatic circumstances, his wife Lee Furlong gave birth to their first child in a Sydney hospital and the couple named him ‘Will’. The birth of the baby, incidentally on the first day of the Third Test at Mohali, means that Watson could now return to India for the final Test of the four-match series beginning in New Delhi on March 22. It is, however, learnt that Watson was yet to decide on rejoining the touring party though his captain Michael Clarke had said on Wednesday that he would like to have his deputy back as soon as possible. Watson had flown out of Chandigarh for Sydney soon after it was announced on Monday that he wasdropped from the team the third Test for a breach of team discipline.


PONTING BACKS WATSON

Suspended Australia vice-captain Shane Watson received the backing of former skipper Rickie Ponting on Thursday as crisis surrounding the team rumbled on. Watson, along with three other players, was suspended for the third test in India after failing to respond to a request from Australia's management for feedback on how the team could be improved. Cricket Australia high performance manager Pat Howard described Watson as ‘sometimes’ a team player but Ponting, one of Australia's most successful captains, begged to differ. ‘Shane worked as hard as anybody around, there's no doubt about that. He's obviously made a blue here, I don't like to refer to it as homework because it wasn't homework. I've never known him to be anything other than a very good team player and a great bloke to have around,’ Ponitng said.
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