Why a Mentor Rather Than a Coach?
When I read that Kevin Pietersen had been appointed as a Specialist Mentor to England’s white-ball teams, I was interested in the choice of job title.
Why mentor rather than coach?
It’s a distinction I’ve spent quite a bit of time thinking about over the years, particularly during my time working in coach development at the ECB and more recently in performance mentoring.
There are plenty of definitions of coaching and mentoring, and I’m not suggesting mine is the definitive one. But I’ve always found it useful to think about the difference in fairly simple terms.
A coach doesn’t necessarily need to have done the thing they’re helping someone to do. Their role is to help people explore different approaches, challenge their thinking and work out what suits them.
A mentor, on the other hand, draws on their own experience of having done it. They’ve been there, encountered some of the challenges and hopefully learned a few things along the way that might be useful to someone else.
If you want a slightly unconventional way of looking at it, think Ted Lasso and Yoda.
Ted Lasso might not know everything about football, but he’s pretty good at understanding people and helping them find their own way. Yoda has been around the block a few times and has plenty of experience to share with Luke Skywalker.
Of course, the reality isn’t quite that straightforward. Good coaches will sometimes mentor, and good mentors will use coaching skills. But I think it’s a useful starting point.
You Don’t Have to Have Done It to Coach It
One of the assumptions I’ve always challenged is that you need to have played at a particular level to coach someone performing at that level.
You don’t.
Having played the game can certainly help, particularly when it comes to understanding the environment and the challenges players face. But playing ability and coaching ability are two different things.
I remember an occasion during a biomechanics module on the ECB Level 4 coaching programme that illustrated this rather well.
One of the participants was a former international cricketer who was just starting out in his coaching career. He was absolutely adamant that, when taking a catch, he moved in a particular way. So convinced was he that he’d already started coaching other players to use the same technique.
During the session, the biomechanist asked him to demonstrate the movement on a force plate.
What appeared on the screen was fascinating. The data showed that he wasn’t actually doing what he’d spent years believing he did.
What I remember most was his initial reaction. Rather than accepting what the evidence was showing, he resisted it. Understandably, perhaps. Here was something he’d believed for years, something that had helped shape his understanding of the game, suddenly being challenged by information he hadn’t expected.
For me, it was a fascinating example of why some outstanding players can struggle when they move into coaching.
When you’ve spent years succeeding at the highest level, it’s easy to become attached to your own experiences and beliefs. They become part of what you know, and perhaps even part of who you are. When new evidence challenges those beliefs, it can feel threatening.
But coaching requires us to be willing to question what we think we know.
That’s not always easy, particularly when your credibility has been built on having performed at the highest level.
Some of the best coaches I’ve worked with have been those who are comfortable admitting they don’t have all the answers. They’re curious, open to different perspectives and prepared to change their minds when presented with new evidence.
And that, for me, is one of the important differences between being a successful player and becoming an effective coach.
Playing experience can give you an enormous amount to draw upon. But if you’re not prepared to question your own understanding, there’s a danger that you simply pass on your beliefs rather than help someone else develop theirs.
The challenge isn’t just knowing the game. It’s being willing to keep learning about it.
The Value of Having Been There
If coaching doesn’t necessarily require first-hand experience, mentoring is largely built around it.
Someone like Pietersen has a huge amount to draw upon. He’s played international cricket at the highest level, performed under enormous pressure, dealt with success and failure, and experienced the sort of scrutiny that very few cricketers ever encounter.
He’s also had his fair share of difficult moments along the way.
I actually think some of those experiences could be just as valuable as anything he achieved with the bat.
Imagine being a young England player trying to deal with criticism, uncertainty over selection or a run of poor performances. Having someone who’s experienced those situations share how they approached them, what they got right and what they’d perhaps do differently could be incredibly useful.
But there’s a catch.
Just because something worked for Pietersen doesn’t mean it will work for the next player.
And that’s where I think mentors need to be careful.
Sharing Experience Isn’t the Same as Giving Instructions
I’ve got absolutely no problem with a mentor telling someone what they would do in a particular situation. In fact, that’s often the whole point of having a mentor.
If Pietersen wants to explain how he approached playing spin, how he prepared for certain bowlers or how he dealt with the pressure of a big occasion, I’d imagine England’s players would be interested in hearing it.
Where I’d be more cautious is when that experience becomes an instruction.
There’s a difference between saying, “This is what I did and why I did it,” and, “This is what you need to do.”
The first gives the player something to think about. The second assumes that the mentor’s way is the right one.
And we know that isn’t how sport — or life — works.
Players have different strengths, personalities, techniques and ways of thinking. What suited Pietersen might not suit Harry Brook, and what works for Brook might be completely wrong for someone else.
I’d much rather see a mentor share their experience openly and allow the player to decide what to take from it. They might adopt the whole approach, adapt part of it or decide it isn’t for them.
All three are perfectly reasonable outcomes.
After all, we’re not trying to produce another Kevin Pietersen. We’re trying to help the players we’ve got become better versions of themselves.
What Might Pietersen Bring to England?
The obvious answer is his batting experience, particularly his ability to perform in different situations and conditions.
But I suspect there’s potentially more to his appointment than that.
Pietersen’s career was hardly uneventful. Alongside some extraordinary performances, there were disagreements, criticism, selection issues and plenty of public scrutiny.
Whether you agreed with him or not, he experienced a side of international cricket that isn’t always visible from the outside.
That could be useful to players who are still finding their feet in the England environment.
I was also interested in Brendon McCullum’s comments about wanting Pietersen to challenge his thinking.
I like that approach. In my experience, one of the dangers in high-performance environments is that people can become reluctant to question established thinking, particularly when things are going well.
Having someone around who’s prepared to offer a different perspective can be healthy, provided there’s mutual respect and a willingness to listen.
Of course, Pietersen has never been someone who’s struggled to express an opinion. The interesting thing will be how he uses that quality in a role that’s ultimately about helping other people.
There’s a difference between having strong opinions and knowing when those opinions will be useful.
And What About Coaching Qualifications?
There’s another aspect of the appointment that caught my attention.
Within English cricket, we’ve spent many years developing a coaching qualifications framework designed to help people acquire the knowledge and skills needed to work at different levels of the game.
Having been involved in that work myself, including leading coach development at the ECB, I naturally wondered whether the decision to call Pietersen a mentor rather than a coach had anything to do with the distinction between playing experience and formal coaching qualifications.
I don’t know what coaching qualifications Pietersen holds, and I certainly wouldn’t suggest the ECB has deliberately used the title to get around any requirements. There may be a perfectly straightforward explanation for the terminology.
But it does raise a question about what we’re actually asking people to do when we bring them into a professional coaching environment.
Are we employing someone to coach, or are we inviting them to share their experience as a former player?
There’s room for both, and I don’t think one is necessarily more valuable than the other.
What I do think matters is being clear about the contribution we’re expecting and recognising that the skills required aren’t always the same.
A coaching certificate doesn’t automatically make someone a good coach, any more than a hundred Test matches automatically make someone a good mentor.
Both roles require an ability to connect with people, understand their needs and help them move forward.
Perhaps the Best Operators Do a Bit of Both
The more I’ve worked in coaching and mentoring, the less concerned I’ve become about trying to put the two into completely separate boxes.
There are times when sharing an experience is exactly what someone needs. There are other times when asking a question and allowing them to work things out for themselves is far more useful.
And sometimes the best thing you can do is keep quiet and listen.
The important thing is recognising what the individual needs at that moment, rather than automatically falling back on your preferred approach.
That’s something I think applies just as much to someone coaching a junior at their local club as it does to someone working with an England international.
Ultimately, I want players to become less reliant on the people supporting them, not more.
If a player constantly needs their coach to tell them what to do, or their mentor to explain how they’d handle every situation, I’m not convinced we’ve done our job particularly well.
We should be helping them develop the understanding and confidence to make those decisions for themselves.
So, Will Pietersen Be a Good Mentor?
I haven’t worked with Pietersen, so I wouldn’t pretend to know what he’ll be like in the role.
What I would say is that he has an extraordinary amount of experience to offer, and I can understand why England would want to make use of it.
The interesting question isn’t whether he knows enough about batting. I think we can safely assume he does.
It’s whether he can share what he knows in a way that helps players develop their own understanding rather than simply adopt his.
And perhaps that’s where my Ted Lasso and Yoda comparison comes back in.
There are times when players need someone to help them discover their own answers, and times when they can benefit enormously from someone who’s already travelled the road they’re on.
The trick is knowing which approach is needed, and remembering whose development we’re there to support.
For me, whether you call yourself a coach or a mentor, that’s what really matters.
About Cricket Mind
At Cricket Mind, we work with cricketers, coaches and organisations to help people better understand themselves, develop their mental performance and make the most of their abilities.
Our work includes individual mental performance coaching, performance mentoring and workshops for clubs, academies and cricket organisations around the world.
