Not to be confused with the English cricketer John Buchanan (cricketer, born 1887)

John Buchanan (cricketer, born 1887)

John Nevile Buchanan MC, DSO, was a South African born English cricketer. Buchanan was a right-handed batsman who bowled right-arm medium-fast. He was born in Grahamstown, Cape Colony and educated at Charterhouse School in England, where he played for and captained the school cricket team,...

.

John Marshall Buchanan (born 5 April 1953 in Ipswich, Queensland

Ipswich, Queensland

Ipswich is a city in South-East Queensland, Australia. Situated along the Bremer River Valley approximately 40 kilometres away from the state's capital Brisbane. The suburb by the same name forms the city's Central Business District and administrative centre...

) is the former coach of the Australia national cricket team and of Kolkata Knight Riders

Kolkata Knight Riders

Kolkata Knight Riders is the franchise representing Kolkata in the Indian Premier League, a Twenty20 cricket tournament. Sourav Ganguly led the team in IPL1 and IPL3, Brendon McCullum in IPL2, and Gautam Gambhir in IPL4...

 team in the Indian Premier League

Indian Premier League

The Indian Premier League is a professional league for Twenty20 cricket competition in India. It was initiated by the Board of Control for Cricket in India , headquartered in Mumbai, and is supervised by BCCI Vice President Rajeev Shukla, who serves as the league's Chairman and Commissioner...

. John Buchanan is a King's Old Collegian (University of Queensland

University of Queensland

The University of Queensland, also known as UQ, is a public university located in state of Queensland, Australia. Founded in 1909, it is the oldest and largest university in Queensland and the fifth oldest in the nation...

, Brisbane

Brisbane

Brisbane is the capital and most populous city in the Australian state of Queensland and the third most populous city in Australia. Brisbane's metropolitan area has a population of over 2 million, and the South East Queensland urban conurbation, centred around Brisbane, encompasses a population of...

)and is also an old boy of The Southport School

The Southport School

The Southport School , is an independent, Anglican, day and boarding school for boys, located in Southport, a suburb on the Gold Coast of Queensland, Australia....

, located in Gold Coast

Gold Coast, Queensland

Gold Coast is a coastal city of Australia located in South East Queensland, 94km south of the state capital Brisbane. With a population approximately 540,000 in 2010, it is the second most populous city in the state, the sixth most populous city in the country, and also the most populous...

, Queensland

Queensland

Queensland is a state of Australia, occupying the north-eastern section of the mainland continent. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales to the west, south-west and south respectively. To the east, Queensland is bordered by the Coral Sea and Pacific Ocean...

, Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

. Buchanan is also known in cricketing circles as 'Ned Flanders', due to his similarity in appearance to The Simpsons

The Simpsons

The Simpsons is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical parody of a middle class American lifestyle epitomized by its family of the same name, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie...

 character

Ned Flanders

Nedward "Ned" Flanders, Jr. is a recurring fictional character in the animated television series The Simpsons. He is voiced by Harry Shearer, and first appeared in the series premiere episode "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire". He is the next door neighbor to the Simpson family and is generally...

.

Early career

Buchanan had a brief first-class

First-class cricket

First-class cricket is a class of cricket that consists of matches of three or more days' scheduled duration, that are between two sides of eleven players and are officially adjudged first-class by virtue of the standard of the competing teams...

 career with Queensland

Queensland

Queensland is a state of Australia, occupying the north-eastern section of the mainland continent. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales to the west, south-west and south respectively. To the east, Queensland is bordered by the Coral Sea and Pacific Ocean...

 in 1978/79 in which he played in 7 matches and hit 160 runs. He also played league cricket in England including a spell at Hyde Cricket Club in Cheshire

Cheshire

Cheshire is a ceremonial county in North West England. Cheshire's county town is the city of Chester, although its largest town is Warrington. Other major towns include Widnes, Congleton, Crewe, Ellesmere Port, Runcorn, Macclesfield, Winsford, Northwich, and Wilmslow...

.

Buchanan began his coaching career in England- he was player/coach/professional for Oldham in Central Lancashire league as well as Cambridgeshire in Minor Counties 1978 & 79. Oldham won the League and Cup double in 79 which was first time in some 40 odd years.

Prior to the senior coaching position, he had five successful years as the Queensland Bulls

Queensland Bulls

The Queensland cricket team, nicknamed the Bulls, are the Brisbane-based Queensland representative cricket team in Australia's domestic cricket tournaments:*Sheffield Shield, 4-day matches with first-class status, since the 1926/27 season...

 coach in which they enjoyed two Sheffield Shield titles, the one in 1994/95 was the first in the state's history, and two Mercantile Mutual Cup

ING Cup

The Australian domestic one-day cricket tournament, currently known as the Ryobi One Day Cup is the premier domestic limited overs cricket competition in Australia. The competition includes the six first-class cricket teams in Australia, as well as formerly including the Canberra Comets and the...

 wins. He also coached Middlesex in 1998.

Australian Coach

Buchanan served as the coach of the Australian cricket team

Australian cricket team

The Australian cricket team is the national cricket team of Australia. It is the joint oldest team in Test cricket, having played in the first Test match in 1877...

. Appointed in October 1999 to replace Geoff Marsh

Geoff Marsh

Geoffrey Robert Marsh is a former Australian cricketer, coach and selector. He played 50 Test matches and over 100 One Day Internationals for Australia as an opening batsman...

 he was considered an unlikely candidate given that he had not played at the Test

Test cricket

Test cricket is the longest form of the sport of cricket. Test matches are played between national representative teams with "Test status", as determined by the International Cricket Council , with four innings played between two teams of 11 players over a period of up to a maximum five days...

 level as had his predecessors, Marsh and Bob Simpson

Bob Simpson (cricketer)

Robert Baddeley Simpson AO is a former cricketer who played for New South Wales, Western Australia and Australia, captaining the national team from 1963–64 until 1967–68, and again in 1977–78. He later had a highly successful term as the coach of the Australian team...

. His initial results were very impressive however as he has helped steer the team to unprecedented success. At one stage his record was 15 wins from 15 games played. However, his contributions have often been questioned by legends of the game including Ian Chappell

Ian Chappell

Ian Michael Chappell is a former cricketer who played for South Australia and Australia. He captained Australia between 1971 and 1975 before taking a central role in the breakaway World Series Cricket organisation...

, Sunil Gavaskar

Sunil Gavaskar

Sunil Manohar "Sunny" Gavaskar is a former cricketer who played during the 1970s and 1980s for Bombay and India. Widely regarded as one of the greatest opening batsmen in cricket history, Gavaskar set world records during his career for the most Test runs and most Test centuries scored by any...

 and even Shane Warne

Shane Warne

Shane Keith Warne is a former Australian international cricketer widely regarded as one of the greatest bowlers in the history of the game. In 2000, he was selected by a panel of cricket experts as one of the five Wisden Cricketers of the Century, the only specialist bowler selected in the quintet...

 who played under him. The most common criticism has been that he inherited a very strong team and his presence just happened to coincide with their victories. Warne has consistently held that Buchanan tends to reinvent everything and complicate all aspects of the game.
Buchanan has, along with former captain Ricky Ponting

Ricky Ponting

Ricky Thomas Ponting , nicknamed Punter, is an Australian cricketer, a former captain of the Australian cricket team between 2004 and 2011 in Test cricket and 2002 and 2011 in One Day International cricket. He is a specialist right-handed batsman, slips and close catching fielder, as well as a very...

, led the side to numerous successes, including a world-record 16 consecutive Test match victories and 23 ODI victories in world cup tournaments, Buchanan only not involved in the first one, a 2001 and 2002-03 Ashes domination winning both series 4-1, the 2003 ICC Cricket World Cup in South Africa, the 2004 tour of India, in which Australia hadn't won a series there in thirty-six years, and more recently, following their shock Ashes defeat, a whitewash of the Super Series that saw the Aussies up against a World XI. In late 2006 he helped the team to their first ever ICC Champions Trophy

ICC Champions Trophy

The ICC Champions Trophy is a One Day International cricket tournament, second in importance only to the Cricket World Cup. It was inaugurated as the ICC Knock Out tournament in 1998 and has been played every two years since, changing its name to the Champions Trophy in 2002...

 victory, after four previously failed attempts and followed this with a 5-0 whitewash in the 2006-07 Ashes Series, the first since the 1920-21 Series. In 2007 his team won their third consecutive world cup. His unorthodox methods have raised a few eyebrows and Shane Warne

Shane Warne

Shane Keith Warne is a former Australian international cricketer widely regarded as one of the greatest bowlers in the history of the game. In 2000, he was selected by a panel of cricket experts as one of the five Wisden Cricketers of the Century, the only specialist bowler selected in the quintet...

 was dismissive about his role in the team. Ponting credits him as being one of the important reasons why Australia completed their World Cup hat trick of wins.

Post-retirement

Following his retirement as Australia's cricket coach, Buchanan has declined an indirect approach to coach the Indian cricket team

Indian cricket team

The Indian cricket team is the national cricket team of India. Governed by the Board of Control for Cricket in India , it is a full member of the International Cricket Council with Test and One Day International status....

 on the grounds that he was not yet ready for another international assignment. However Buchanan has not ruled out a return to coaching an international cricket team in the future.

In mid 2006, Buchanan confirmed that at the conclusion of the 2007 World Cup in the West Indies, he would step down, possibly to coach the Southern Redbacks

Southern Redbacks

The South Australia cricket team, nicknamed the Southern Redbacks and known as the West End Redbacks due to their sponsorship agreement with local brewers West End, are an Australian first class cricket team based in Adelaide, South Australia, and represent the state of South Australia...

. However, in October 2007, he accepted a position as Ambassador for Cricket Coaches in Australia, where he hopes to use his experience to help the development of Australian coaches in the future.

Buchanan released a book named, "If Better Is Possible". His book shows how business managers at all levels can lead their teams to greatness, and explores in detail what it takes to build and sustain a champion team. The book offers guidance on making important, and life changing choices, creating a culture of success, gaining mental toughness, using system, and processes to achieve winning advantage, and providing leadership opportunities. It presents valuable insight into the strategic thinking behind shaping, and leading an elite team. The book starts by quoting Henry Kissinger

Henry Kissinger

Heinz Alfred "Henry" Kissinger is a German-born American academic, political scientist, diplomat, and businessman. He is a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. He served as National Security Advisor and later concurrently as Secretary of State in the administrations of Presidents Richard Nixon and...

: "....take people where they have never been before....."

Kolkata Knight Riders

During the second season of the IPL

2009 Indian Premier League

The 2009 Indian Premier League season, abbreviated as IPL 2 or the 2009 IPL, was the second season of the Indian Premier League, established by the Board of Control for Cricket in India in 2007. The tournament was hosted by South Africa and was played between 18 April and 24 May 2009...

, Buchanan's strategies for KKR raised a lot of controversies which were further alleviated because of the team's poor performance. A former Indian player also accused Buchanan and his coaching staff of racial discrimination against players from India. He was sacked in June 2009 by the team owners for his poor performance.

England consultant

In preparation for the 2010–11 Ashes series

2010–11 Ashes series

The 2010–11 Ashes series was played in Australia as part of the England cricket team's tour of Australia during the 2010–11 cricket season. Five Tests were played from 25 November 2010 to 7 January 2011...

, the England and Wales Cricket Board

England and Wales Cricket Board

The England and Wales Cricket Board is the governing body of cricket in England and Wales. It was created on 1 January 1997 combining the roles of the Test and County Cricket Board, the National Cricket Association and the Cricket Council...

 hired Buchanan to act as a consultant to the England Cricket Team.

New Zealand Director of Cricket

Buchanan was appointed to the role of Director of Cricket for New Zealand Cricket

New Zealand Cricket

New Zealand Cricket, formerly the New Zealand Cricket Board, is the governing body for professional cricket in New Zealand. Cricket is the most popular and highest profile summer sport in New Zealand....

in May 2011. Buchanan was appointed to oversee the establishment of New Zealand Cricket's new high performance programme.