http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Waqar-Younis-Maitla-c96193, Gary Kirsten, Andy flower – Who was the best coach of 2011?
There have been some very good performances by certain cricket teams this year, but normally coaches get less credit for that.
Mostly, captains are the ones who get all the credit if a team does well, but there is a lot of planning done before the start of a match or a tournament and a coach is an important part of that think tank.
There were a few coaches who did a splendid job in 2011, guiding their respective sides to the top of the world. However, top three of them were Waqar Younis, http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Gary-Kirsten-c58527.
The latter of the three was the third best coach of the year, considering his terrific contribution to the Indian cricket team.
Many might consider why Kirsten is rated as the third best, as he was the man behind India’s success in the http://www.senore.com/Cricket/ICC-World-Cup-2011-c100625 World Cup, 2011 and several other bilateral series.
The reason for that was the South African enjoyed most of the success when http://www.senore.com/Cricket/India-c750 played at home. The team played consistently well against top teams on batting friendly home surfaces and reached the top of the points table in the ICC Test team rankings.
Luckily for Kirsten and India, the World Cup was also held in Subcontinent and the Men in Blue played all their games including the final against http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Sri-Lanka-c758 on home soil.
http://www.senore.com/Cricket/MS-Dhoni-c2028 led his side to victory, but Kirsten stepped down from coaching of the side soon after the end of the Mega Event.
Although India played extremely well under the former South African opener, his real test would have been when the team went on foreign tours.
However, the Proteas legend stepped down from the job just before India went to http://www.senore.com/Cricket/England-c56013. The team had a disastrous tour, losing every single match on the British soil and that clearly showed there was no significant improvement brought into the side.
Soon after the English tour, the World Champions played a couple of home series against the Poms and http://www.senore.com/Cricket/West-Indies-c760. They were back to winning ways once again and clearly indicated that no matter which coach they have, they will remain dominant on home soil
and struggle on foreign tours.
The second best coach of the year was Flower, who guided England to some historic victories last year. He was recently awarded coach of the year award in the country for his terrific contribution in the past couple of years.
Under coaching of the Zimbabwean, England have reached the top of the points table in the ICC Test and Twenty20 team rankings.
The most historic achievement for Flower was guiding the Poms to and Ashes victory in http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Australia-c746 followed by a whitewash series win against India.
However, the former wicketkeeper batsman for http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Zimbabwe-c3045 failed to put the team on top in One Day International (ODI) cricket, as his side suffered a 0-5 series loss to India.
Considering the performances of http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Pakistan-c755 over the past year, Waqar proved to be the best coach amongst all.
The former fast bowler was given a team, which only had controversies and had no direction. He needed a special effort to keep the team united and on the path of victory, but it was not easy because three top players http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Mohammad-Amir-c76675 and Mohammad
Asif were banned from playing international cricket.
However, Waqar had the never say die attitude and prepared his side for even the strongest of challenges.
The Men in Green are now winning in all three formats of the game despite not being able to play any cricket on home soil.
Considering this, Waqar turned out to be the best coach of the year with Flower and Kirsten number two and three respectively.
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