He comes across as a person who feels the world is against him. He finds the English Cricket Board (ECB), which was searching for a coach in 1999, "a little unprofessional, not to mention discourteous", because it removed him from its shortlist without him having "a single conversation with anyone at the ECB". His home country, New Zealand, was worse, as its board made him travel to London at his own expense for an interview, only to be told he had been "unsuccessful in your application" for the job. "I was shocked and bewildered.... And simply hadn’t entertained the possibility that I’d be written off on the basis of a fuzzy teleconference interview...."