KEY POINTS:
There's a view that the appointment of Andy Moles as the new coach is somewhat underwhelming.TWO John Bracewells leave New Zealand cricket next week. One, the ODI coach, should be regarded as a success. Under him, New Zealand maintained a strong reputation as capable of mixing it with the very best teams.
It was only last season that New Zealand were within a whisker of topping the world ODI rankings. Bracewell did a good job, got the best out of the players and will walk away from that part of his job pretty happy with what he achieved.
The other Bracewell, the test coach, must be rated a failure.
New Zealand's record under him is exceptionally poor and he was largely using the same players as he had for the one-day game. Why did they do the job so well in one form, so poorly in the other?
Bracewell might have an answer to that, but it's hard to fathom.
Having played with Bracewell in the latter stages of his New Zealand career, I've found his transition to coach intriguing.
Bracewell the player was all fire and brimstone, a hard nut, down to earth, who didn't pull any punches and didn't care what anyone else thought of him.
Bracewell the coach was full of theories and while he still retained that spiky edge at times, he was positively mellow compared with the player of 20 years ago.
I'd rather have seen more of the old Braces because I feel players relate better to a coach they feel is in sync with their thinking, who speaks their language, who thinks like they do.
Obviously, as coach and selector he had to keep a degree of separation but I wonder if things would have been different if the players sensed he was on their wavelength.
I felt sorry for Bracewell in relation to the loss of several players during his reign. Chris Cairns, Craig McMillan, Nathan Astle, Stephen Fleming and Scott Styris all walked away, in some cases making it clear they had problems relating to the coach.
Sheeting the blame for their departures back to Bracewell is wholly unfair.
It's a fact of life that when their time is up players don't like it, unless it's on their terms.
That's not the way life works.
Those transitions are always messy, never much fun for anybody. In Fleming's case, the selectors opted to drop him as test captain collectively; it was not Bracewell on his own making that call.
In fact, I suspect he was slow to get on board with the idea. In my book, all were coming to the end of their careers for various reasons - most still had a bit of cricket in them, but their international days were numbered.
We all know that there comes a time when your best days are behind you and that from there any slip in form will be the end of you.
None of us like it, but we accept its inevitability.
It is the only way it can be. In my case, I chose not to play that game and stepped out four years earlier.
For the rest, whether it happened when it did, or a few months later, it was simply a matter of time.
Bracewell was unlucky in being the wrong guy in the right place, and, in any case, players are the last people you should listen to when they're being shunted on.
Despite the protestations it is hard to make a case that it was not the right thing to do.
A year or so down the track even the players are pleased to be out of it. Amazing how time changes perception.
There's a view that the appointment of Andy Moles as the new coach is somewhat underwhelming. I don't agree.
I suspect he might be a good appointment in that he'll happily take a back seat as Dan Vettori steps up his authority as captain of the team.
The key will be Moles' relationship with Vettori. Everything else flows from there.
Moles is one of those solid former county professionals with 10-15 years under his belt. In my experience, they tend to be analytical people who have made the best of their abilities and have a knack of being innovative in their strategies.
Cricket is different from sports like rugby or league, where the coach has a huge input into what happens in the 80 minutes.
I doubt Richie McCaw has much time to stop and think about the finer points of what's going on round him in the hectic pace of a rugby test.
A cricket captain has to be thinking throughout the day, between balls, between overs, at the fall of a wicket, at drinks breaks. Strategy usually develops and unfolds during the game.
Therefore his input is often required to be greater than a rugby or league skipper.
Don't rush to judgment on Moles.
If his relationship with Vettori is rock solid, the doubters could be in for a surprise.
