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Darren Lehmann seems fond of his caricature as a coach who believes there are few problems in a cricket team that cant be solved over a pint or three. Asked recently whether one reason for Australias poor Test performances is the absence of a full-time specialist spin coach - John Davison, a spin coach who appears to have a beneficial impact on Nathan Lyon, rarely tours - Lehmann guffawed: So you want another staff member on tour?Lehmanns curt response was a window into an issue of growing tension in the sport: whether international teams, long mocked for being behemoths in which the players are outnumbered many times over by the support staff, actually suffer from having too few specialist coaches. Just as Australia have been criticised for their lack of a permanent spin coach, so England have been attacked for not having a spin bowling or wicketkeeping coach who always travels with the team; indeed, they now no longer have a full-time fielding coach either. Throughout international cricket, it remains the norm for teams to recruit consultant spin and wicketkeeping coaches intermittently; actual full-time specialist coaches in these two areas remain extremely rare.Bill Gerrard has worked in professional sport, both in analytics and in coaching, across baseball (for Oakland Athletics), rugby (for Saracens) and now football (for AZ Alkmaar). In these sports, Gerrard observes a salient contrast with cricket. I had assumed that cricket would have been more advanced in using specialist coaches. There is massive scope for specialisation.As in most areas off the field, American sports have traditionally led the way in using coaching specialists. It is difficult to put a time on how far behind cricket is, since coaching specialisation goes back a long way in both baseball and the NFL. Cricket seems to be only slowly catching up, Gerrard reflects. Even at Saracens, a leading rugby union club in England, but one with far fewer resources than Full Member cricket teams, Gerrard was struck by how specific each coachs role was. Each coach had a specialist area of responsibility - attack, defence, kicking, scrum and line-out, he says. Never mind specialist wicketkeeping and spin bowling coaches, crickets equivalent would be more like a range of batting coaches for different needs - say, attacking spin, defending against spin, attacking pace and defending against pace.That would surely be going too far, and Lehmann clearly has a point when he argues against bloating the backroom staff for its own sake. Yet that cannot obscure the curious truth that while cricket is richer than ever, its financial and professional stakes so high that teams take nutritionists and even chefs on tour, many countries still do not bother with full-time specialist coaches for two of its most important skills. It is certainly not as if the wealthiest Test nations cannot afford specialists; the resistance, as Lehmann implies, is all cultural.One only needs to listen to Lyon eulogise about the importance of Davison, or Adil Rashid praise Saqlain Mushtaqs role in his palpable improvement in India, for evidence of how the best specialist coaches can improve performance. Neglecting to bother with permanent specialists amounts to a bizarre acceptance that keeping and spin bowling are somehow of secondary importance compared to other skills in cricket: third-class citizens, as Graeme Swann has lamented.We should have full-time spin coaches, not just for the main team but on the county circuit as well, Saqlain said last week. It is not just to look after the spinners but it is to help the batsmen as to how the spinners think as well. His view is hardly surprising, given that he wants to become Englands first genuinely full-time spin bowling coach. (Mushtaq Ahmed, who coached spin from 2008 to 2014, did not always travel with the team.) But the fact that Saqlain departed Englands tour of India after the third Test, when he had clearly aided their bowling of spin, seemed to touch the confines of lunacy. Andrew Strauss, Englands director of cricket, will soon review the coaching support for spinners, but is said to be unconvinced that a full-time coach is needed.Cricket has made huge strides in embracing specialist backroom staff. Witness how only one out of 14 countries had a specialist fielding coach in the 2003 World Cup, but all 14 did by last years tournament, and Englands extensive use of specialists at Loughborough and on England Lions tours. Yet in international cricket teams, a certain lingering resistance to specialism remains.Prospects for greater specialisation apply not only to roles within a cricket team, but also between the different formats. As more players specialise, Gerrard asks, Why not have coaches specialising as well?Trials with specialist coaches for white-ball cricket have so far been mixed, with the overriding impression from the job-share between Andy Flower and Ashley Giles with England in 2013-14 being that the notion was a necessary evil, at best. Yet, as teams become more distinct in red- and white-ball cricket, a system of separate coaches will become easier to manage. In time, specialist coaches not just for different formats, but for different disciplines within the formats, could become increasingly common. There is almost no crossover between what batting and bowling coaches need to hone before a Test match and a T20.And, given the saturated international schedule, specialist coaches will bring a clear benefit, making it easier for national boards to tie down the best coaches for longer, in the knowledge they will not have to surrender a palatable work-life balance to coach at international level. This could make coaching at international level a little more attractive relative to coaching T20 franchises, increasingly the favoured option for many leading ex-players. Naturally, greater specialism will bring new challenges. Head coaches will need to adapt to a changing environment: more specialist coaches could mean that head coaches become a little less hands-on and adopt more of an overseeing role. Other sports suggest that this can be done without undermining the head coachs authority, but the scope for disagreement between coaches is certainly exacerbated if there are more of them around.And the risk of simply overwhelming a player with a surplus of information and advice, some of it contradictory, will increase. Recall the Suns list of 61 guilty men - including 29 non-players - involved in Englands disastrous Ashes tour in 2013-14. Trent Woodhill, a leading T20 coach, warns that a bad appointment as a full-time spin coach could relegate spinners to being fourth-class citizens.But these dangers are no reason to ignore how cricket teams can benefit from moving towards the levels of coaching specialisation that are the norm in other sports. During a tour, such coaches might rarely actually coach in the classical sense of working on a players technique. Any technical change you make for a player is unlikely to hold up under pressure unless groomed for a minimum of six months, says Woodhill. Specialists are most valuable when theyre providing support and guidance around decision-making and game awareness. You can provide different training options, as a specialist, that can enhance and repeat good performance. Normally, then, the greatest value of a specialist coach on tour is simply in deep understanding of their craft, and being a voice to talk through tactics or methods, just as Saqlain has been for Rashid in India.Batsmen and fast bowlers do not have to deal with such relationships being curtailed by their coach flying home midway through a tour. While cricket teams ruthlessly seek how to find any competitive advantage, it is perverse that wicketkeepers and spin bowlers still face being estranged from the coaches who can help them the most.Air Max 97 China Wholesale . Pert has formerly spent time as an assistant coach with Cardiff City, Coventry City, and Bahrain mens national team. "Martyn is a highly-respected coach with experience at the top levels in England," said Whitecaps FC head coach Carl Robinson. Air Max 97 Have a Nike Day For Sale . PETERSBURG, Fla. http://www.outletairmax97.com/nike-air-vapormax-97-metallic-gold.html . It was just business as usual for the Thunder at home. Durant scored 32 points and the Thunder beat the Bulls 107-95 on Thursday night for their eighth straight win. Air Max 97 Off White Wolf Grey Menta . However, he did make them miss him a little less. Cundiff, who had the unenviable job of replacing Dawson last season, agreed Thursday to a one-year, $1. Air Max 97 Ultra 17 Red . Francis told several hundred members of the European Olympic Committees that when sport "is considered only in economic terms and consequently for victory at every cost . ANAHEIM, Calif. -- Consistency and eating up innings has always been Jered Weavers focus. The three-time All-Star pitched into the eighth inning to win his third straight decision, Kole Calhoun hit his second big league homer in as many days, and the Los Angeles Angels beat the Toronto Blue Jays 7-3 Saturday night. Weaver was sidelined for more than seven weeks after breaking a bone in his non-pitching arm in his second start of the season. He already has as many losses as he had all of last season -- when he became the Angels first 20-game winner since Bartolo Colon in 2005 and pitched his first career no-hitter. "My goals for the rest of the season are just as they were if I wouldnt have gotten hurt," Weaver said. "Im just trying to go out there and win ballgames, try to get us as deep into the game as possible and throw up zeros. Theres nothing I can do about the time I lost. Youve just got to make up for lost time." Weaver (6-5) allowed three runs, seven hits and two walks through 7 1-3 innings and struck out five, including the side in the fifth. His streak of consecutive scoreless innings at home was snapped at 26 1-3 when Brett Lawrie led off the third with his ninth home run, but the right-hander still improved to 8-2 lifetime against the Blue Jays. "Theyve got a good lineup with some guys that can hurt you," Weaver said. "But I was able to minimize the damage for the most part, and the boys came out and scored three early. That took a little pressure off me." Weaver had an opportunity to become the first pitcher in the Angels 53-year history to make four consecutive home starts without giving up a run, but Lawrie ended that with only the second homer against Weaver in his last eight outings. "I threw two sliders in a row to him, and both of them backed up," Weaver said. "Hes a mistake hitter. I made a mistake to him and he hit it put it where it should have been." Esmil Rogers (3-6) gave up seven runs -- five earned -- and 10 hits over five innings. The right-hander is 0-4 with a 6.60 ERA in his last eight starts after back-to-back wins against Texas and Colorado. The Blue Jays, trying to avoid finishing last in the AL East for the first time since 2004, are a season-worst 16 games behind first-place Boston and 7 1/2 behind the fourth-place Yankees. Manager John Gibbons, who has used his bullpen more than any other team, has gotten only 11 innings combined from his starters through the first thhree games of this series.dddddddddddd "Starting pitching is the name of the game, and its really hurt us this year," Gibbons said. The Angels grabbed a 3-0 lead in the first. Mike Trout extended his consecutive on-base streak to 34 games with a single, and scored when Mark Trumbo barely beat the relay to first by shortstop Jose Reyes on a potential inning-ending double-play grounder to second baseman Maicer Izturis with the bases loaded. Erick Aybar and Chris Nelson followed with RBI singles. Los Angeles extended the margin to 7-1 with a four-run fifth that began with a leadoff homer by Calhoun, who drove in the tying and go-ahead runs in Friday nights 7-5 win with an eighth-inning homer off All-Star reliever Steve Delabar. "Last night was definitely a lot of fun, and tonight was just another good team win," Calhoun said. "The guy threw some tough pitches to me the first two times up, and youre going to come up empty a few times. Thats going to happen. Thats part of the game." Rogers hit Trout on the left arm two pitches later before giving up a single by Josh Hamilton and a run-scoring single by Howie Kendrick. Center fielder Colby Rasmus made a wide throw to the plate trying to get Trout, and catcher J.P. Arencibia threw to second trying to nab Kendrick -- but his throw sailed over Reyes and skipped between Rasmus and right fielder Jose Bautista, allowing Hamilton to score and Kendrick to circle the bases. "We wanted to make Rogers throw strikes," Calhoun said. "We knew he can get a little wild sometimes, so we just took it easy and didnt try to do too much, just stay up the middle. After my at-bat in the first inning, everybody saw the ball pretty well and started a nice little rally, and that set the tone for the rest of the game." NOTES: Weaver has not issued an intentional walk since Sept. 4, 2009, against Mark Teahen at Kansas City. Since then, he has faced 3,100 batters in 779 innings without giving up a free pass. ... Angels LHP Jason Vargas, who hasnt pitched since June 17 because of a blood clot under his armpit, threw 50 pitches in a three-inning simulated game and reported no discomfort. ... Weaver has 1,197 career strikeouts in 1,416 2-3 innings, and needs 18 punchouts to surpass the total his brother Jeff had in 1,838 innings in the big leagues. ... The Angels grounded into two double plays, increasing their total to a major league-worst 106. ' ' '