The 68-year-old is trying to return New South Wales to former glories while also looking to produce the next generation of Australia players
Alex Malcolm11-Sep-2025What is driving you to keep going with New South Wales at this stage of your coaching career?You have to be careful not to overstay your welcome. But I’m particularly thrilled being involved with Cricket New South Wales. It’s steeped in history, it’s got high expectations, and I like to operate within that framework. We’ve got an exciting opportunity with an emerging group of players to build a foundation that can stand the test of time like previous decades have delivered.The mind still is going at 100 miles an hour, but the body is slowing down. But I’ve got some wonderful support coaches around and the system itself, behind the Blues team that represents New South Wales in the Shield and other competitions, is first-class. There’s a nice balance of city and country involvement in that process and a vibrant premier club competition. We need to put in place that next six or seven Australian players [like those] that have been sitting in the Australian team for many years now. That’s the challenge. We’re chasing it aggressively.Related
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No one has more coaching experience than you in Australian cricket. You have coached senior teams and young teams. You have a young group in New South Wales now. What are you learning about coaching young players now compared to other times in your career?I think right now it’s probably the toughest environment for young players to be in with the continual drag and adaptation from format to format. During those really solid years I had in Victoria, T20 had just been emerging. So, the players were really consistent and focused on two formats, and were very good at those two formats. Now with the introduction of T20 cricket, it’s played in grade cricket as well, so not only the players at our level are having to adapt with that, but also players in club land are experiencing the challenges of what’s the right tempo to play at and what are my foundational skills with bat, ball, and fielding.It’s the individual challenge for the player to slip in and out of those processes. It is about getting the player to understand how to set themselves up for each of those different formats, how they control their mental skills in the game. That’s probably an area of growth for everyone in the industry, coaches as well, to learn more about how to assist our players in those transition moments from game to game.How did you assess last summer with New South Wales and what are you hoping to get out of the group moving forward for this summer?Largely similar to the first season, progress is being made. We had some real challenges in terms of the depth of our squad and our Australian player representation across the course of the year. That took away some of our next level players in Sean Abbott, Ben Dwarshuis, and Tanveer Sangha. For us to be playing off for a grand final spot in the last game of both competitions meant that we’re very, very competitive. I’m really pleased about that. The next step for us is to win those crunch games more often than we did, in particular at the back end of last year.But really pleased with Kurtis Patterson jumping back in as a real presence around our group. We had to deal with Moises Henriques retiring out of the red-ball game basically through the course of the season. But thankfully he’s not lost to us and will participate in our one-day program going forward. I think that’s a great leadership sharing opportunity between he and Jack Edwards, who showed some great signs last year, but it also wore him down across the course of the season, so that balance needs to be struck and found for this season.Liam Hatcher will likely have a greater role to play this season•Getty ImagesYou’ve lost Jackson Bird from the attack. But Jack Nisbet played for Australia A during the off season and you’ve got a group of emerging quicks. What are your hopes with the ball?For us to be playing off in those last two games that I mentioned without Chris Tremain bowling a ball for the season, Hayden Kerr being unavailable for most of the season, and Daniel Hughes not playing at all, I think it was a pretty good effort across the group and we exposed some new players. Jack Nisbet is making steady progress. Ryan Hadley, Liam Hatcher and Charlie Stobo will form the basis of our attack going forward. And hopefully Chris Tremain is back and able to bowl this season.So it will be a young group and we’ll be putting a lot of attention strategically and technically around them in the lead-up to what remains to be a tough challenge for all teams at the start of this season with the Australian team playing and an Australian A team playing internationally that clashes with a couple of rounds of one-day cricket and Shield matches. There is a great opportunity for young players to be exposed early in the season.You will have some Australian players dipping in and out at the start of the season as they prepare for the Ashes. How do you manage that?It’s never a burden to try and fit those players back into your team because the benefit is not only in what they deliver on the field, but it’s in preparation, it’s in dressing room moments that their experience is shared with our younger players. For example, Pat Cummins against Victoria last year playing in the side, young Charlie Anderson played in that game, and Jack Edwards and our young players, and that is priceless.What do you see as the foundation for these young guys to become international three-format players? What are the core things you are trying to help them with or does it just depend on the individual? Each individual has their own roadmap and their own strengths and weaknesses. We try, with them, to identify them and go to work. For some, it’s a technical issue. For others, it’s making good strategic decisions in the game. For others, from a mental point of view, it’s about blocking out the pressures and playing with an open mind and making good, crisp decisions. So we’re on our toes, and the players are as well, in building their foundation that is likely to work in each of those formats and to understand the moments in the game and having the capacity to adjust your game to play team first cricket.Kurtis Patterson’s comeback was one of the stories of last season•Getty ImagesHow do you feel about the Shield pitches at the moment in terms of producing batters for the next level, and giving them confidence to make big scores, given it’s very difficult for domestic batters to average more than 40 given the way the surfaces are playing?It was strongly reported and happily received by batting groups across the country…that there was a desire to tone down the pitches across the country and find that better balance between bat and ball. I think that worked for two thirds of the season until some places identified that a result is necessary, and the nature of the pitch changes quite aggressively. I think for that to be stamped out would be excellent. But it is a delicate balance between bat and ball, and also strategic decisions in games can influence whether a pitch is rated in one fashion or another.There’s perhaps not a great wider understanding of batting averages and how difficult pitches are in Shield cricket. Do you have a sense of what a realistic good marker for a young batter to achieve across one or two or three Shield seasons to develop into an international player?The highest performers are 50 or above. I think a really solid 40 plus across two or three seasons for a batter and somewhere between 25 and 30 with the ball. If you’re at 20, like Jackson Bird last year, less than that, 34 wickets [at 17.20] – he’s a legend of the competition and he had a terrific season – but that’s what the best produce, and your developing players should be, I think, chasing those numbers but also understanding the process to get there.Your skipper Jack Edwards is coming into that age bracket now where he’s going to be at his very best. What’s the next phase for him?It is for him to sort of recognise how he wants to play and approach the game and in red-ball cricket he’s moved the game forward really strongly. To have him and Ollie Davies, two of the same type together, puts a bit of counterpunch into our armoury. I’m very open-minded about Jack still playing anywhere in the list from one to six in white-ball cricket. I think he’s still got a capacity to find that rhythm, and then as he’s become more mature, to lock in a consistency around that.
