Not rushing decision on coach despite urgencey - Sutherland
Brydon Coverdale
October 13, 2011
Cricket Australia will not rush in to naming Tim Nielsen's replacement as head coach, even if it means starting the home summer with the stand-in Troy Cooley still in charge. The appointment of Pat Howard as general manager of team performance means that in theory the search for a new mentor can move forward, but it will be slowed by the fact Howard does not start his new job until mid-November.
That leaves only a fortnight before the first Test of the summer, against New Zealand at the Gabba starting on December 1. Cooley, the head coach at the Centre of Excellence in Brisbane, is with Australia's squad in South Africa as acting coach, and he could find himself filling the position a little longer, after Cricket Australia's chief executive James Sutherland said the process would roll out over "the next couple of months".
"We know and understand that we don't have a coach, we've got Troy Cooley, who is acting in the role at the moment," Sutherland said. "We're very aware of that. What I've always said is we will step up this process but we're not going to get ahead of ourselves. We understand the urgency but we're not going to compromise the process, because we have to make sure that we go through a rigorous process to identify the best person for the job.
"It's clearly a key focus and virtually the first thing that will come on to Pat's radar. We're in a position from today to go forward very quickly with that and roll that out over the next month or so, or whatever it takes - probably over the next couple of months."
Howard will be a key man in finding the new head coach, an expanded position that also involves directing the coaching strategy for elite cricket throughout Australia. He said the captain Michael Clarke would play an important role in determining the new mentor, as the pair would need to work closely together to push Australia back up the Test rankings.
"He's got to be complementary and work with the captain," Howard said. "You can't have antagonism working from day one - that's never going to work. So the ability to have effectively what is the spine of cricket, the coach and captain, has got to work really well together. Those considerations have absolutely got to be part of how you fit that jigsaw puzzle together. Michael's skills and strengths have got to be utilised and complemented."
Appointing coaches is nothing new for Howard. During his time as high-performance chief with the Australian Rugby Union he signed the New Zealander Robbie Deans as coach of Australia's national side, a move that has resulted in the Wallabies reaching this Sunday's World Cup semi-final against the All Blacks. Australia's cricket team has never had a foreign head coach, and while that tradition is likely to continue, Howard will at least bring a fresh perspective to the search.
"I see myself having a very strong role in that," he said. "I have done a lot of coach recruitment - ACT Brumbies, the Reds in Queensland, who won the Super-15 this year, and Australia. I have a fairly strong history, albeit in another sport, in this.
"I recruited Robbie Deans. That was a fairly unique time. It was what was required in the game at the time and we went through a fairly rigorous process in being able to deal with that. You've got to recruit the best person for the job. That factors in things like culture, it factors in where the team is at, and you don't take in an pre-conceived ideas. A big thing for me is that it's not about the names, it's about getting the capabilities that the game needs right now to complement the other people who are there."
The other major appointment on the horizon is the national selector, a full-time role that will include heading a five-man selection panel. For the time being, the incumbent chairman of selectors, Andrew Hilditch, remains in position along with the part-time selector Jamie Cox, while Greg Chappell, who will be cut when a new panel is appointed, is in South Africa as the selector on duty.
"We're probably more advanced in the national selector role," Sutherland said. "We advertised a few weeks ago, so the search consultant recruiter that we've been working with has been meeting with various people and has gathered a list of names that has been waiting in abeyance for the general manager to be appointed. Now we're at a stage where we can start talking about that a bit more freely and start getting down to a shortlist to identify that. It's going to be a similar sort of time frame but we're certainly very aware that the summer is approaching and we want to have someone on board as quickly as possible."
