The former fast bowler is moving to Zimbabwe to pursue a dream.
‘EXPERIENCE required” is a suffix to many job advertisements. In the expanding field of cricket coaching it even applies, as Jason Gillespie has discovered, to stalwarts with nine years of international playing experience behind them.
It is the reason Gillespie, 36, his wife Anna and their three pre-school-age boys are this weekend relocating from Adelaide to a city of 100,000 in central Zimbabwe for the next seven months – so he can fulfil that ”experience required” clause.
His brief stint in the Indian Cricket League, the ill-fated predecessor of the Indian Premier League, gave him a taste of the lucrative post-Test possibilities as a player and a commentator. Even so, he had an unexplained attraction to coaching.
The suitability of Gillespie for coaching was evident in an August 2009 article he wrote for ESPNcricinfo dissecting Australia’s Ashes loss to England. One of his observations, that paceman Ben Hilfenhaus ”can be so accurate and consistent that he can be a bit predictable”, was emphatically proved in last summer’s Ashes. He also called for Cricket Australia to make chairman of selectors a full-time role, which has two years later become one of the key recommendations of the Argus report.
The initial barrier to Gillespie securing coaching roles was his ICL involvement, as the powerful Indian cricket board successfully persuaded other nations to ban anyone who had been involved in the rebel Twenty20 competition. ”After you’ve played cricket for your country for a decade,” Gillespie lamented, ”to be seen as an outcast was a pretty bitter pill to swallow.”
Once that barrier was cleared and Gillespie’s job applications could officially be considered came his realisation that, ”like anyone else who goes for a job in any walk of life”, experience was essential. The coaching courses he had undertaken were not a substitute for it.
The solution came last year in the form of a conversation with former Zimbabwe fast bowler Heath Streak, now back in the national fold as its bowling coach, that morphed into a job offer: leading the Kwekwe-based MidWest Rhinos. As Zimbabwe was still a year away from ending its six-year Test absence, the first-class structure there could hardly have been in rude health, a reality that ensured Gillespie’s skills would be tested immediately.
One thing he learnt very quickly was to ignore the regimented coaching principles and ”coach-speak” he had been instructed to use.
”I coach with a bit of a gut feel,” he said. ”I like talking to my players just as people and not specifically a coach-to-player relationship. There are times when you need to be firm and lay down the law, but by and large we’re all in the business of trying to improve.
”We’re all going in the same direction. I suppose I’m just learning to trust my instinct a little bit more rather than try and be seen to be doing the right things by the coaching manual.”
As a player, Gillespie had been accustomed to exerting himself mentally and physically while out on the ground, and then resting up on both counts as soon he reached the dressing room. The necessity for him to now be across all disciplines – batting, bowling and fielding, and not just for his players – rather than just worry about skittling batsmen – has forced an end to that approach.
”Now I’m pretty much watching every ball that’s bowled. It’s a bit more tiring than I thought it would be, to be honest,” he said.
”It’s still important as a coach to have that player’s perspective, because at the end of the day they’re the guys out there doing the job. I look at it and try to find ways how I can prepare these guys the best I can, for them to be the best they can be.”
For Gillespie to accept the initial Rhinos deal required a significant sacrifice from his wife, as their youngest son was only nine weeks old when they left for Zimbabwe.
”When I said that I wanted to give coaching a go, I’m not sure what she [Anna] really thought of it, but she supported me 100 per cent,” Gillespie said.
”I’ll never forget, pretty early in the piece in Zimbabwe [last year], I came home from a day’s play and we were sitting on the couch chatting. Anna saw I had this big grin on my face and said, ‘You love what you’re doing, don’t you’? and I said, ‘Yeah, I really do’.
”That’s when it hit home for me, that I was doing something I really love doing. It reinforced my decision to bite the bullet and do some coaching in Zimbabwe.”
The Rhinos coaching experience has already started to open doors for Gillespie. He became bowling coach for IPL team Kings XI Punjab, under former teammate Michael Bevan, and will reprise that role next season.
But instead of solely using that IPL experience as a springboard for other high-profile jobs, Gillespie’s unshakeable gratitude to Zimbabwe Cricket and the Rhinos for ”taking a punt” on him persuaded him to again uproot his family and continue his tuition of young Zimbabweans.
Gaining more experience anywhere can only be beneficial at this stage of Gillespie’s career, while his willingness to return to Zimbabwe with his family is a strong endorsement of his commitment to it.
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