Flaunt your illiteracy, says Demers

By John Cheeran
What should be the qualifications of a coach in order to be successful? Some of the stuff I have heard over the years is this…
He should have played the game at the highest level.
He should have a degree in people.
He should be a great communicator.
And of course he should have good education. If he has got theories to explain and prove, then that’s it.
Now, Indian cricket fans are witnessing the experiments conducted with great gusto by Greg Chappell. Chappell has managed to create an impression among Indian journalists that he reads Plato to unwind.
Will Chappell be successful in bringing the World Cup back to India in 2007? That’s, however, quite a distant event now.
Meanwhile let me write about a successful coach. Jacques Demers was the head coach of ice hockey team Montreal Canadiens and he won the Stanley Cup, the holy grail of ice hockey. Just last year the Conservative Party of Canada pleaded with him to run for the Parliament.
He politely declined, but for reasons that he kept to himself until a few weeks ago: Demers is illiterate.
A new biography, “Jacques Demers: En Toutes Lettres,” which translates, roughly as “all spelled out,” and which highlights the abuse he endured from his violent and alcoholic father and the humiliation surrounding his illiteracy, has become a instant best seller.
An illiterate? And a successful coach?
Yes. It is time Board of Control for Cricket in India and the wise men who interviewed Greg Chappell, Tom Moody, Desmond Haynes and Mohinder Amarnath read the Demers’ biography.
I recommend the book “Jacques Demers: En Toutes Lettres,” to those stars in the Indian team who tend to look down upon their less accomplished coach. Let the stars realize that even an illiterate can whip them into winners.
When Demers went out to restaurants with the players and coaches, he pretended to read the menus and then regularly ordered filet mignon or chose from specials offered by the waiter. He always brought a pile of newspapers and magazines on the plane for team trips, and then pretended to read them while trying to make out a few words to teach himself to read.
And think about this.
“If you are illiterate, you really have to use your brains because you are always trying to fake it,” says Philip Fernandez, manager for special programmes at Frontier College, Canada’s oldest literacy organization.
This must be a comforting thought to those who are eager to unseat Chappell as the Indian coach. They can flaunt their illiteracy now.