Dylan Cleaver: Questions over panel's role - but Vettori does it right

Serious questions will be asked in New Zealand Cricket corridors this week over the role of the appointments panel that rubber-stamped Andy Moles' application last year.

The reason is they have got exactly what they knew they were going to get: an amiable, down-to-earth journeyman with limitations.

So the question lingers like a bad smell as to why there was such a disconnect between what the players wanted from an international coach and what the panel - including Justin Vaughan, Stephen Boock and John Wright, and players' association manager Heath Mills - deemed acceptable?

To be fair to NZC, they did not have a lot of luck in their search for John Bracewell's successor. The creation of the Indian Premier League brought about a number of highly paid roles that did not require the fulltime attention helming New Zealand would (and at a considerably lower salary).

High-profile South African targets Graham Ford and Mickey Arthur would have been genuine coups, but in all likelihood were using NZC's interest as leverage with their current employers - Kent and South Africa respectively - and their interest quickly waned.

Highly touted Australians Greg Shipperd and Matthew Mott were talked to and NZC were desperately close to getting the latter over the line before he decided it was too difficult to leave the bosom of his family in Sydney.

So Moles, who had a good rapport with his Northern Districts players, was effectively last man standing.

It is all very well being wise after the event but there was disquiet almost from the get-go. Why didn't they appoint an interim coach - John Wright was under their noses (on the appointments panel, no less) - and wait until they had a compelling candidate?

Instead, they took the path of least resistance, only to find a year into the journey they ran into a rather large obstacle in the form of an emboldened Daniel Vettori, as influential a figure in New Zealand cricket as any before him.

Vettori was in an unenviable position. Tired of seeing New Zealand fall behind most of the cricket-playing world while on his watch, he was faced with a choice: either continue to lead the Black Caps as surrogate coach; or make it clear to New Zealand Cricket bosses that urgent change was needed.

When a wide-ranging review process started, and with the unanimous support of his players, he did the latter.

While there is the predictable hue and cry over the airwaves about player power and the tail wagging the dog etc, Vettori's intentions are utterly honourable.

He genuinely believes that, in young players like Ross Taylor, Daniel Flynn, Jesse Ryder and Tim Southee, they have the potential to enter, by New Zealand standards at least, a golden age, yet he does not believe those players' potential is being unlocked.

The problem has never been the man, it is the coach. There has been no falling out.

Every player spoken to by the Herald on Sunday said they liked Moles and felt sorry for him.

Several also spoke highly of assistant Mark O'Donnell's work ethic, one player saying that "he worked his arse off", but the problem was simply that they did not feel Moles (who understandably disputes this) had the technical or strategic skills to lift the side.

If the recruiting and interview process had been sufficiently vigorous this should have been evident.

If the shortcomings were in fact recognised and articulated to Moles as, to steal Graham Henry's words, "work-ons", why wasn't NZC more vigilant in making sure he was addressing them?

Good people who should have known better took their eye off the ball.

Vettori didn't.