Interview with Dave Houghton (27 February 1999)

27 February 1999

Interview with Dave Houghton

John Ward

John Ward has recently interviewed Dave Houghton about the present state of cricket in Zimbabwe, his involvement in it and the way he views the future of the game in the country.

JW: Dave, it's now eighteen months since you retired from international cricket after the New Zealand visit in 1997. Can you review the reasons why you retired?

DH: It was definitely not my best series ever -- I got a couple of twenties and thirties, and one 40 -- and I think that was one of the reasons why I threw it in at that time. I felt that with Murray Goodwin due to play for the team straight after that series, it was probably time for me to move aside and let him come in. Afterwards I was full-time coach when we went up to Kenya and played the tri-nations series with Bangladesh; we played really well throughout and won every game comfortably, including the two finals, so it looked like the right decision for me.

JW: You looked to be seeing the ball as well as ever against New Zealand, although you appeared to lose concentration when you had looked well set.

DH: This was the problem; I kept getting out at 25 or 30. With Murray coming into the side, one player would have to drop out, and the player who needed to go out of the side was me, because those in the side, like Craig Wishart for example, were youngsters and I wanted to give them as good a run as they could get. When we picked the side for the tours to Sri Lanka and New Zealand I stood down and made way for Murray.

JW: You did mention to me some other reasons for retirement at the time . . ?

DH: Not really; I wanted to concentrate mainly on coaching. The player-coaching thing was always good while you were playing, but in preparation it wasn't good enough, because I was spending too much time worrying about everybody else's game and not enough time worrying about my own. The end result was that I wasn't preparing myself as well as I should, and I didn't think I was going to do anybody justice by going out and playing without having the right quantity and quality of practice.

I think also I had set my sights on retiring when I was 40; now I had reached that age and I'd had a good run, so it was time to go.

JW: You did mention to me some niggling injuries which were bothering you.

DH: It wasn't so much niggling injuries; it just hurt a lot more. I didn't have anything that was going to keep me out of cricket, but after a day in the field my back and knees would be sore the next morning. Again, it was probably because I wasn't fit enough; I was so busy worrying about everyone else that I wasn't putting in enough practice and training time myself.

Looking back now, it was exactly the right time to go, because our side has developed now, and with Neil Johnson and Murray both in the team they don't miss me in the least.

JW: They do miss your input on the field!

DH: Yes, but as a coach I can still have an input. Although I often have to wait until tea or drinks breaks to get things across, in cases of urgency I can get through to a bloke on the boundary, and when they're batting I can send a runner on with water to get the message across. It's a little more inconvenient than being on the park, though.

JW: Ever thought of using cell-phones?!

DH: Well, hopefully one day they will come up with batting helmets with microphones so I can just talk to the bloke like they do in American football. Probably the one area where we need help on the field is the captaincy because Alistair Campbell still has a lot to learn about captaincy, as he himself admits. That was an area where, as player-coach on the field, I could get to him straight away and make suggestions. Now I have to let things go for a while before I can get a message on. I don't like to keep sending messages about such things as field changes from the sidelines; he needs to learn that himself and get a feel for the game himself -- which he's getting better at.

I think Alistair himself is aware of the fact that he's learning the job. He's not a natural born leader, he's a person who was shoved into the job and has taken quite a long time to understand the job on the field. Off the field he's the most magnificent captain we've had; he's tremendous with the press and the interviews, tremendous with TV, and he puts a great impression across for Zimbabwe cricket. He needs to learn the game a little more.

JW: You had your work cut out last season with the various things that happened in Sri Lanka and New Zealand.

DH: Sri Lanka was probably the most disappointing tour for me because we played very good cricket and I can't really go into the details again, especially on an interview, because I'll end up getting fined again! But I didn't feel that we were justly treated. For all the work that we put in, to come away from that tour with nothing was very sad.

Unfortunately it had its impact on the tour to New Zealand because we went there in the wrong frame of mind; we were just pleased to be out of Sri Lanka and we got badly beaten there. They played much better cricket than we; there are no excuses. It was sad, because we had been playing well up till then, and I feel that if we had got our deserved successes in Sri Lanka we would have had a better tour of New Zealand. As it turned out we were actually thrashed.

So we really had to go back to the drawing board and start again -- which is where we are at the moment. We regrouped and started again. We had a good tour here against India even though we got beaten in the first two one-day games. We recovered well and then we had a good tour of Pakistan. So it's been a good regrouping and reassessment time, and now the side is playing really well -- we did well in Sharjah too.

We have a 100% record this season really, because we only played four Tests; we won two, one was drawn due to bad weather and the other was fogged out completely. Those that were finished, we won 100%.

JW: Can you outline your involvement in the Zimbabwe Cricket Academy?

DH: We have always needed an academy and we have mooted this idea for ten years, and it's always been a case of, "Yes, it's a good idea; we must do something about it next year." When I signed a contract to stay in Zimbabwe instead of carrying on with Worcestershire in our winter, I decided that when I was over here in the winter I would just get the whole thing started.

With the help of one or two of the public, particularly Rod Bennett from Schweppes who came on line as our chairman of our board of trustees for the academy and of course the help of the media -- Simon Parkinson (of ZBC) was brilliant -- we came up the idea of a sponsored walk from Bulawayo to Harare to raise some funds to give the project a kick-start. It raised close to a million Zimbabwe dollars, but it also raised the awareness around the country of the need for this academy.

Subsequently we've had a lot of support from commercial companies in the country and our fund-raising drive is going fantastically. We have the money now probably to run the academy for another two years without raising another cent, but obviously being a non-profit-making organisation we need to prepare not just for two years but for another five or ten years down the line. It's got to be self-sufficient.

Country Club (in an eastern Harare suburb) kindly offered us their facilities, so we have tied in with them. We have upgraded the field, put in sightscreens and picket fences, and we're building a practice facility there which will contain six artificial nets, plus three turf nets. It's all caged in and floodlit so we can practise day and night.

The next project on the go is the building of a new pavilion for ourselves, with an office block for the academy staff, and eventually get on line as a live-in academy where we build dormitories. Those are both in the pipeline and we have sponsors available for both those projects. We're now just doing the surveying and working with the architects, so hopefully sometime between April and June this year we'll start building, with a view to it all being up by the end of the year.

JW: How much are you involved in the day-to-day running?

DH: I'm involved probably too much at the moment, more than I would like to be. My involvement was to get it built and to get it up and running, and then employ people to run it. As we stand at the moment, I'm probably doing a little too much, as I've enough work on looking after the national team and age-group squads. So I help where I can, and hopefully the guys we've employed, under Gwynne Jones the director, will take it on now and run it as it should be run.

JW: What do you find are the main problems experienced by young batsmen and young bowlers breaking into the national side?

DH: It's the lack of experience. They haven't played much first-class cricket of any standing, so they come in virtually jumping from club cricket, which is not very strong in this country, to Test cricket, which is extremely strong.

The second problem is that they haven't been taught how to succeed at whatever level they're at. Batsmen, for example, are comfortable with getting 35 or 40 because they have done better than the other six batsmen in the team, instead of when they've got 30 or 40 going on to turn a high percentage of those innings into hundreds. If you can't make hundreds at league level on a regular basis in this country then you are never going to make hundreds at Test level. It's a matter of getting the awareness right of how to play the game properly and to be successful in what they do. And that's where the Academy again comes into focus.

The same applies to our bowlers. They live on a diet of bowling ten overs in a one-day situation in league where stopping people from scoring runs is more important than getting them out, and the next step up is to play a Test match where you have to take twenty wickets to win the game. Instead of being able to bowl six overs in a spell as tightly as possible, you've got to be able to get them out. Again they have to make that adjustment and learn how to get batsmen out, and learn how to succeed at that level because they can get batsmen out.

So, until we get a regular first-class situation in this country where players are playing a dozen or so threeor four-day games in a season, learning to bowl people out twice, we're always going to have trouble bowling people out in Test matches.

JW: Thinking ahead to next season, are there any alterations in the set-up that you can see which can practically be implemented?

DH: I think the first thing they have to do is increase the size of the Logan Cup, even if the standard is not right up to scratch yet. We have to try to get ourselves into a fouror maybe five-team competition. Then if we play each other twice players will get at least six first-class games. That will be the first change that must be made. Maybe we can bring in a bonus-points system too, but most of the bonus points should come in bowling sides out, to emphasise the importance of bowling sides out twice to win games. That to me would be the most important thing we can do for cricket in this country, to get a meaningful first-class competition going.

JW: And the club cricket set-up?

DH: The club cricket set-up will always be the Sunday league, because we must still take into account that 80% of our club cricketers are hobbyists, who play cricket for fun and as a hobby. We can't make everybody professional and they don't want to be professional. So our club cricket will always be the same; people will turn out for two practices a week and they will always play on Sundays.

If we get a proper first-class competition going in this country, it will spin off into a stronger club system naturally. But the club system as it is at the moment, with the national league with eight sides, is a good system; it's just that the standard of cricket is not very good.

I'm not sure that it would work for club cricket to return to 'normal' cricket instead of limited-overs cricket. If they did that they would have to play it over two Saturdays or Sundays. Just to play normal cricket over one day will lead to sides batting till 3.30 in the afternoon and setting an impossible target for the opposition to chase, and I don't think that's going to do our cricket any good. I'd much rather see our big cricket played in the Logan Cup first-class arena and our club cricket remain as it is, played over 50 overs per side.

JW: Have you any opinions on schools cricket?

DH: There again they play one-day cricket; some of them play 50-over matches and some of them just play 'normal' cricket. I personally think they should play normal cricket, involving declarations, which means a bit of work done by the captains. But most importantly, as I said to a master yesterday, if you play normal cricket you've got to be prepared to lose in order to win. There's no point in batting other sides out of the game till 3.30 in the afternoon and then getting a comfortable draw. The masters themselves have got to be there forcing the kids to play positive cricket, with positive declarations, and not to be scared to lose. The master I spoke to yesterday, his team batted on for too long, but he said he still left a reasonable target. The opposition lost three wickets and closed up shop. How will they ever know if they could have achieved a target? To me, you go at a target until you're seven or eight wickets down, and then nine, ten and eleven can close up shop. Then everyone's got some benefit out of the game.

JW: Coming back to what you were saying about young batsmen coming into Test cricket without yet having learned how to build a big innings, can you expand on how you work with them to help them learn this?

DH: There's no specific work I can do to help such a person; I just have to be talking to him all the time, discussing situations, keep trying to get him focus. If he keeps getting out in the forties he has to concentrate more during that period, keeping the ball on the ground until he gets to 55 or 60.

I have conversations with people all around the world, and I spent some time recently with Graeme Pollock. He was asked the same sort of question and he said there are only two things you can tell them. When they hit the ball past the bowler on the ground they are batting well, showing the full face of the bat -- that makes common sense. So many players nowadays hit everything across the line, due to one-day improvisation, so they need to go back to the basis of hitting the ball straight.

He said the other thing is to ask yourself how many bad balls you are putting away. It might sound a very simple question, but so many people are not putting away bad balls for four runs. Graeme Pollock was the best batsman in the world for putting away bad balls. If you bowled him a half-volley he hit it between cover and mid-off for four. He never hit cover, he never hit mid-off; he hit it right through the middle. If you're doing that properly and scoring off all the bad balls, you won't be getting out looking to score off a good ball.

Those are just the basic things I need to be sitting down and talking through with a player. The point for me, though, is that if they've been talking about this and doing this through school and in league, they wouldn't have this problem. So this is what I talk about to them, and they now have to take this back to league and score those runs in league. Even in one-day cricket, the principles are still the same. Hit the ball along the ground -- the only difference in one-day cricket is that you might have to improvise a bit in the last ten overs -- but mainly hit the ball along the ground, hit the bad ball for four, run quickly between the wickets. These are principles that survive in all cricket.

I would just like to see guys making bigger scores on a regular basis. There are too many who feel that if they've made a talented fifty against So-and-so they should be looked at by the national selectors. That doesn't work for me. Our national team is playing pretty well at the moment, and even if one of them is a little out of touch I'm not going to drop him to replace him with somebody whose highest score is 48, even if he was looking quite good in that game. If somebody needs to be replaced, I would look down to the B side and in the national league results and see that somebody has scored four hundreds in his last six league innings and three hundreds in the Bowl competition -- then I will say, "Fine; let's give this boy a crack in the national side."

But if you look at the scores now you don't see that. The England A side has come and gone. Did any of our batsmen score a hundred against them? Only Andy Flower and Grant Flower. It's the same old story, the seasoned players who know how to turn small scores into big scores. I went down to watch that match. They never hit the ball in the air. All they did was hit the ball along the ground, in the gaps; if they got a bad ball they put it away. They got hundreds -- easy! The talented youngsters coming through all had opportunities; they got 25, caught on the boundary, or a big shot caught in the covers. They've got to learn, and they have to learn quickly because they are not going to make the national side unless they do that.

JW: And the bowlers? How do you work with those who are used to being more content with one for 20 rather than four for 40 in their ten-over stint?

DH: There is some value obviously in getting one for 20 in ten overs because it creates a bit of pressure, but to bowl sides out you have to convert that pressure into wickets. No matter what game you're talking about, whether it's one-day cricket, Test cricket or first-class cricket, there's no substitute for bowling line and length. If it's a green flying pitch you bowl line and length; if it's a flat pitch you bowl line and length.

But obviously if it's a flat pitch and you need to be bowling people out, you need to be experimenting a little. So even though you are still bowling a line and length you might need to have a good slower ball, you might need to have an outswinger, or an inswinger, or bowl with a bit of variation from the crease. All of our bowlers are stereo-typed. They all run in, their back foot lands in the same place and their front foot lands in the same place, every ball for 25 overs. That's the sort of thing we have to try and undo.

Bowl one ball from wide of the stumps. Lance Klusener is a good example. He bowls quite quick in a dead straight line, but he bowls close to the wicket, he bowls from the middle of the crease and he bowls from the edge of the crease. He has three different deliveries and he bowls a dead straight line, and he gets wickets. These are the things our guys have got to understand.

For example, our spinners. For years our spinners, especially our off-spinners, have been taught by John Traicos: get close to the stumps, bowl flat, don't let people score off you. But that doesn't get anybody out. Off-spinners have to bowl from the middle of the crease and wider, and bowl outside the off stump and turn to hit middle stump. That's how you get them out. And you have to be prepared to hit them for the odd six and four. That's part of the game. Spinners buy wickets. There are one or two situations that arise where you might need your spinner to be tight for ten overs to create pressure, then he can do that; that's easy.

For me, if I have a decent spinner, a Paul Strang or an Andy Whittall or an Adam Huckle, my big emphasis with them is to be able to use the crease. If you ask a leg-spinner what variation he has, he's got a top-spinner, a leg-spinner and a googly -- three variations. But, if he uses the crease, he has six variations of each of those variations. Bowl from behind the crease, from the middle of the crease, from the side, from the front -- and so on. So now he has 18 variations. That's what gets people out.

But the big thing about having variations is still to be able to land the ball in the same spot. So that's where your craft and your practice come in. They have to work hard at those sort of things, always bowling the ball AT the same place, line and length, but bowl it FROM different places and still land it in the right place. That gets wickets. And that's what we work on with our bowlers.

JW: Are you prepared to give any specific examples of batsmen or bowlers who have responded particularly well to the points you have given them?

DH: Take Andy Whittall, for example. He's an intelligent guy, and he has picked it up really well. A year ago I had a conversation with Andy which was probably along the lines of, "I don't really think there is a big place for off-spinners in world cricket" -- which I don't. "Unless you are something special. So you've got to try and become something special." And he has done. He's taken the advice, he's using the crease well now, he's tried to develop this other ball, like a seamer, which goes the other way, a bit like Saqlain Mushtaq does. The end result is that Andy is now playing a principal role in our side, whether it is Test cricket or one-day cricket. So he has learned well.

Streaky is another one who has learned well; he's using the crease now and picking up wickets because of it. Henry Olonga is just a revelation, but he's done it all himself.

I would think on the batting side at the moment, the one bloke who has impressed me has been Stuart Carlisle. I don't think Stuey has the best technique in the world; if you were to study it blow by blow you would probably find quite a few faults in it. But what he does have is a good brain and he has the temperament that wants to make big scores. He will be more successful than any of the other guys coming up. He will be able to make the transition to Test cricket; I know he's played for us a few times going back three or four years, but now he can come in and he will be successful.

JW: And how do you help other players to read the game on the field and to think for themselves?

DH: We have lengthy team talks and on the field itself we have some very knowledgeable cricketers -- the two Flowers in particular, and Murray Goodwin has an excellent knowledge of the game. I've never believed in one person doing all the thinking and making all the decisions. It's a co-operative out there; the only thing the captain does is to make the final decision. But we encourage constant communication, obviously within the time frame allowed because otherwise we would have slow over rates which would cost us money. We encourage everybody to throw in a number of ideas and suggestions, with the captain making the final decision.

It's working -- and hats off to Alistair; for a guy who really didn't know a great deal about captaincy he's done well for us. He has the best success rate of any captain we've ever had, and that's from a bloke who's still developing his understanding of the game of cricket. He's done well, and right now the only area of Alistair's game I'd like to see him improve on is batting. I still think he's not scoring enough runs for his talent.

JW: I was looking at his record recently season by season, and I see that he began his Test career averaging in the upper thirties, and that has gradually dropped now to the upper twenties.

DH: Exactly. But I've never seen him fail to strike the ball well. I've seen batsmen come and go and have bad patches, and I've had plenty of bad patches myself when I forget which end of the bat to hold. I've never seen Alistair have a bad patch. He always comes in and strikes the ball with the middle of the bat from the first ball. But he doesn't have any big scores behind him. So he's underachieving for his ability, and that's the one area I'd like to see him work on. His captaincy is now looking after itself. But if he can start to put together some big runs, especially in Test cricket, then to me he will be the complete captain.

JW: How do you work with the selectors?

DH: I'm not a selector and neither is Alistair. We are asked our opinions; we give them, and then are asked to leave the meeting while they pick the side. Certainly in the last eighteen months they have taken our opinions pretty well, but we have never got the exact side we asked for. So yes, they listen to our point of view and they pick the side, and that I think is fair. I don't want to be involved as a selector, and I don't think Alistair should be involved either.

JW: How would you wish cricket to be encouraged in the minor provinces: Manicaland, Midlands, Masvingo and so on?

DH: I think the most important thing for us to do in cricket here is to redevelop those areas. We need Manicaland and Midlands to be playing cricket; we need Masvingo. My plan in the next three to five years is to build up those sides by putting academy students into those teams at the end of their time in the academy. They are bound to us for three years, so for three years I can put somebody in Mutare or Kwekwe and so on. And I think that by doing that over three to five years we can build up two first-class sides, and that again will build up their local leagues and I think we will be back on track with four or five first-class provincial sides.

It's an absolute must. At the moment everyone wants to descend on the capital and play their cricket in Harare. I'm trying to do the exact opposite and send them straight back into the country. I hope people listen to me, and I hope the players themselves understand the need for it. To be quite honest, in the current economic climate, why would anyone want to live in Harare? It costs far more to live in Harare than it does to live in Mutare. So economically it's a wise move for any kid. As I say, a young kid could be the founder and builder of the Manicaland first-class side. There is something to achieve there; it certainly won't preclude them from playing in the national side; in fact it will do just the opposite. I've always been a firm believer in people playing for weaker sides, rather than going off to the best sides. It's easier to play for the best sides; go and play for a weaker side and stand out as the person scoring all the runs or taking all the wickets. That's the easiest way to get into the national side.

JW: It was good to see England A playing a match in Kwekwe. So often touring teams don't visit the minor centres at all.

DH: Again that is a mission I started after the walk. I'm not trying to take all the credit here, but I've been to the ZCU and we've discussed it at length. Kwekwe must now be given regular touring games where we can fit them in; obviously when you get somebody like Australia who are only coming here for one Test and three one-day internationals we can't fit Kwekwe in. But where there are sides which have games in between internationals, they must be sent to Kwekwe or Mutare.

We can't ask these centres to be self-sufficient if we don't give them a product to sell. If we say to the Midlands, "You guys have got to get your own sponsors, you've got to get your act together, get yourselves up and running with a provincial side . . ." how do they attract sponsors if they have no cricket to show them? So we've got to do that; we've got to put cricket matches there, give them the opportunity to stage them, to sell them to local sponsors, raise their own revenue, and then yes, I'm sure they'll look after themselves.

JW: I think it was Denis Streak who mentioned to me that Hwange would also like to see some top-class cricket.

DH: We did that in the past; I've played many games at Hwange for Zimbabwe A sides. Again, I agree; let's try and get them in as well, and let's try and get Masvingo in too. The more we can spread it, the more chance we have of improving the game countrywide. With the numbers that we have playing cricket, we have to have the whole country playing, not just Bulawayo and Harare. It will not survive on Bulawayo and Harare alone, because the next place that will fold will be Bulawayo. And if that happens we have no price; we might as well pull out of cricket altogether. We have to go the other way and redevelop all those other areas. We should never have let them fall down.

JW: Do you have any influence on the township development programme?

DH: I oversee the coaching, which means that I get reports of the programmes through our national director of high-density coaching, Kari Motsi. I literally don't have time to oversee all the areas. I spend a lot of time raising equipment for them. I have a monthly report-back when I sit with the coaches and found out exactly how it's gone, what their problems are and so on. That really is the extent of my involvement.

JW: Do you have any particular ideas of things you would like to see happening in that area, but aren't at the moment?

DH: The only other thing I want to see in our high-density areas is the building of more cricket clubs. I see now that we have Winstonians' new ground opposite Gwanzura Stadium in Highfield and a project under way in Mabvuku. We are now starting what we should have done ten years ago, so we are ten years behind in that respect.

To me the biggest and most crucial area of the whole programme is kit and equipment. You can teach as many people as you want to play, but if you don't give them anything to play with you're getting nowhere. That is the biggest problem we have at the moment, something that I'm working on all the time. The small amount of stuff we have donated is fantastic and obviously well received, but we will not survive on it. We have to find some way of getting equipment here at a cost that makes it available to the man in the street.

We get all these international brand name bats coming into the country and sports shops are looking to sell them at $12 000 or $15 000, but it's impossible -- we will never be able to play cricket with that. So we've got to find some manufacturing area in this country, import the raw materials and manufacture the equipment ourselves. To me that's the only way. From here we could maybe open a base that exports to South Africa, Kenya and so on. I don't think there are any manufacturing areas in Africa. Again, it's an area that I want to work with.

JW: It would be nice to see Winstonians playing in the national league first division next year, but the problem is that it is limited to eight teams at the moment. We don't want to lose Bulawayo Athletic Club (the bottom club) because that would leave only one Bulawayo club (Queens). (Winstonians is a newly established black club taking its name from Churchill High School, which most of its players attend, but which aims to build a team from players in the townships and is planning to build its own high-quality ground in the high-density suburb of Highfield. They are currently in the second division, finishing second despite having five games out of seven washed out.)

DH: They can increase it to ten sides.

JW: You don't think that would lower the standard too much?

DH: No, I don't. I would like to see Winstonians, and also Midlands come in so that we have a genuinely national league. We already have Manicaland there; we have two sides from Bulawayo as you said, and the rest from Harare. Let's get Midlands in as well. Midlands have just started up again, and I think an initiative should be taken by the ZCU to jump the lower leagues and come right into the first league. We will be able to give them a couple of players from the academy to bolster their strength, and I'd like to see it go up to ten sides.

JW: As long as we don't have problems from other teams who don't want to travel to Mutare or Kwekwe to play their away matches.

DH: I don't think that would come into it, because I know that certainly in my day at club level, and I know it exists today at club level, people look forward to their games in places like Mutare. They can make a weekend of it there -- travel down on Saturday, spend the night at Troutbeck (in the Nyanga Mountains north of Mutare) and play in Mutare on Sunday. I think people still enjoy that sort of thing, so I don't see it as a problem.

JW: Just thinking ahead to the World Cup: what sort of aims will you be going with?

DH: Obviously our first aim is to win the World Cup! But we've got to be realistic in our aims and ambitions. I think at the moment that we are a much better outfit now than we have been at any other World Cup. We have clear-cut opportunities to progress through the first round, so I would say that my first aim and ambition is to get us through that first round and into the Super Six. Once we're in the Super Six we're in a situation where we have two good games and we're through.

So the first and most important goal for us is to get into that Super Six. I take it as the hardest part of the World Cup to qualify through that first round. I'm happy with the group we're in -- four of the five sides in that group we've beaten in the last year or two (Kenya, India, Sri Lanka and England, excluding South Africa) -- and there is a confidence factor in our team that we can do it again. We also have two subcontinent sides in our section and again it's a confidence matter: we feel that if we were playing them in the subcontinent it would be a different proposition. Playing in England we feel that the conditions will suit us more than the opposition. So there's a lot going for us and we have a lot of confidence that we can get through that stage. Once we get into the Super Six, we'll set ourselves a new goal and try to get into the semi-final. But it's that first crossroad.

JW: Just thinking generally about future plans: five years from now, for you personally, for the academy and for cricket as a whole in this country, what would you like to see?

DH: In five years' time I would like to see our academy as one of the best in the world -- fully live-in, producing top-quality players. I'd like to see us have a fiveor six-sided first-class domestic competition, and I'd like to see our national team getting a more equitable proportion of Test matches. If you look at how we stand at the moment, in the last two years we've played eleven Test matches. In the last two years Australia have played 28. We've played our eleven Test matches mainly against Sri Lanka, New Zealand and Pakistan. Australia have played in that time West Indies, South Africa and England. I'd like to see a more equitable distribution whereby we are able to play more against every side, and playing as many Tests as they are, in series that are no less than three games. One-off Tests are fantastic when you have nothing else, but I'd like to see us play always the best of three as a minimum. And in that five-year frame is World Cup 2003, which I hope we will be co-hosting with South Africa. Maybe that's the one we'll win -- if we don't win this one!

JW: And your personal goals?

DH: I will always be in cricket, in some form or another. I don't believe in continuing in one role all the time, and there are various areas open to me. I'm doing my umpiring exams at the moment -- maybe I'll get into umpiring, or as a match referee. I genuinely believe that two years down the line I'll have done four years as coach of the national side and that they will need a new coach because the boys get bored with the same thing being said by the same person, even though you try and make it fresh. They will need a new coach to give them new ideas and new energy. So if I am to continue in coaching, it may be that I'll be more involved with the Academy, getting through to the younger lads. But I'll always be in cricket in some form or another. Maybe it will be marketing. After twenty years in cricket I can't see myself heading off and becoming a restaurant owner or something like that -- that's not up my street!