Trawling through social media over recent weeks there have been plenty of videos of players sharing how they are coping with the lockdown, but what about our county coaches; how easy has it been for them to prepare without knowing 1) when the season will begin, and 2) what formats of the game will be played? So, we picked up the phone and spoke to current Yorkshire head coach, Andrew Gale about life in lockdown and of course a look back at his career.
“There’s been loads of different emotions really,” said Andrew. “We travelled to India on a pre-season tour. The advice we’d received at that time was not to be worried. And then once we arrived, we had one training session and one night there and we were told to travel straight back home. We’ve been on lockdown since. From a cricket point of view, it’s been frustrating. We put in six months of hard work into preparation for this season, from signing players to all of the planning that goes into. The players had put in a lot of gym work, and technical and tactical work since mid-November. To have all of that stall, has been frustrating. As a coach now, you can’t really do any more planning because you don’t know what you’re planning for. We don’t know when the season will start, what the season will look like, what formats we’ll be playing; so all I’ve been trying to do is make sure the players are ok from a wellbeing point of view, and ensuring they are staying fit for when/if we do start. However, as frustrating as it is from a cricket point of view, you have to put some perspective on things, it is just cricket. When you watch the news every night, you realise it’s just a game of cricket, cricket will come back the other side, people are losing their lives every day, businesses are closing, we all have to keep that perspective.”
Important words that we should all remember. Now, being in lockdown we thought it was a good opportunity to get to know arguably one of the most successful county captains of recent years. Under Andrew’s captaincy, Yorkshire won back to county championships, so I was looking forward to speaking to this captain turned coach. But first, let’s roll back the years and where did Andrew’s love of cricket begin?
“Cricket started for me by chance. I wasn’t really brought up in a cricket family. My Dad is a musician and has never played cricket in his life. Cricket happened for me by being around a group of older lads. There was a park at the end of our road, where cricket was played so one day I asked my Mum if I she could buy me a bat, and everything went from there.”
And from there it did. One morning a letter arrived at the Gale household, which Andrew and his family thought was an invitation to a district trial, it turned out to be an invitation to a trial with Yorkshire’s under 11s and from there begun a love affair which saw Andrew play right through the Yorkshire age groups, through to the academy and eventually into the first team as captain and then coach.
“It wasn’t under I was 14 or 15 that I started to take cricket seriously, in terms of realising I could actually make a career out of it. Like kid I wanted to play football for England, but I soon realised I wasn’t good enough. If I wanted to be a professional sportsman, it would have to be through cricket.”
It’s fair to say to cricket was the right decision as it wasn’t long before Andrew received youth international recognition, with selection for England’s under 15’s, 17s and 19s.
“That was a really enjoyable time. I met people in that set-up who I went on to play with and against and who became lifelong friends. I also learnt a lot. And it was good for me to experience different coaches. In fact, it’s funny when I look back, there’s a lot of links in my career which go back to those days. For example, Paul Farbrace was my England under 15s and under 19s coach and later came to Yorkshire as assistant head coach.”
And I was intrigued to know, how those ‘internationals’ prepare youngsters for the demands of professional cricket. “I remember touring Australia which was a massive learning experience for me. Heading into that tour everything had been going well, really smooth, lots of runs and then on that tour, which was my first ever tour, I felt like a fish out of water. I couldn’t buy a run. But it was the bump in the road I needed, at that age. I think it’s the best way to learn and the sooner you can experience a bump, the better.”
Embed from Getty ImagesThe bump didn’t last long, as Andrew was soon wearing the famous Yorkshire white rose for the first time. “It was always the dream to play for Yorkshire. My one-day debut was against Worcester at Headingley. I came into it after a double hundred for the second team, which gave me my chance. The county championship debut followed, which meant a little bit more, as it’s the format you want to be playing, with the history and tradition, particularly the history and tradition that’s associated with Yorkshire.”
And how did that championship debut against Somerset go? “I lasted 3 balls before I was walking back to the dressing room! If I’m honest, I was a late developer. I thought I was good enough at that age when I made my debut. But I didn’t really grasp it and know my own game until I was 24 or 25. I wasn’t someone who burst onto the scene and did really well. It took me a couple of years to nail down a place in the team and prove people wrong. I was never the most talented or natural player and I always had to work hard for everything I got. My way of proving myself was by scoring a lot of runs in the second team and forcing my way in and proving to people I was good enough across all formats.”
And the initial journey was tough for Andrew. He scored his first hundred in a championship game at Scarborough against Warwickshire in 2006, but by the end of that season he was actually considering his future at the county. “I scored that hundred, then in the next game against Hampshire I scored 30 and a duck and didn’t play for the rest of the season. I wasn’t being given the opportunities, that I felt I deserved. I’d scored over a thousand runs for the second team, I was named player of the year for the second team, but I just couldn’t get an opportunity with the first team, to the point where I seriously had to consider whether moving would be the best option for my career.”
Embed from Getty ImagesAndrew stuck at it and the following season his opportunity did come, primarily thanks to a couple of new arrivals at the club. “The following season Darren Gough came in as captain and Martin Moxon came to the club. They told me I would be starting the season with the first team and would be given a run of games and that they were backing me. That gave me the confidence I needed to establish myself in the side. We played Hampshire in first game of the season, and I scored a hundred, and in the second game we played Surrey and I got another hundred. I was off and running from there. From that moment on, I felt backed and never looked back.”
In that period, Yorkshire had some big-name players, I was interested to know how easy or difficult it was for a young player trying to establish themselves in that set-up, with such players in the dressing room? “It was certainly intimidating. As a young lad you were walking into a dressing room of Gough, Vaughan, Silverwood, White, McGrath, Hamilton, Kirby, a hell of a lot of tough players. You’d sit in the corner in those days and not say anything. You just got on with it. If you were told to do something, you just did it. Times have changed since then, but it was a good grounding. They were tough people, tough cricketers. If you didn’t do something right, they’d have a go at you, but they’d also give you a pat on the back and encourage you as well. As a youngster you had to adapt to that environment. There was expectation and that was the pressure of playing for Yorkshire.”
Was there a player who helped you through those early days? “I’d say Anthony McGrath. He was a good influence on me. He really helped me with my batting. As did Darren Lehmann; just watching him go about his business and also the mental side of the game. And also, Jacques Rudolph was a good mentor to me as a young player coming through. He’d done really well for South Africa, and we signed him on a Kolpak and I loved his hunger for runs.”
Embed from Getty ImagesWith such a wealth of talent, it was certainly a surprise that, that squad didn’t go on to win trophies. “We underperformed for a number of years. We made a few semi-finals but we were always mid-table in the championship or fighting relegation. If I’m honest, I think we sort of had an expectation of average. There wasn’t the belief in the dressing room back then that we could compete for trophies. And looking at the players we had, some players like Vaughany and Hoggy were at the back end of their careers and their focus was on getting back into the England side, which can happen with international players. And lastly, I’d just say we probably didn’t have the focus and mindset needed to win trophies. It was something I realised we needed – a shift in belief.”
Embed from Getty ImagesAnd at the end of the 2009 season, the club turned to Andrew to deliver that change in belief, as he became Yorkshire’s youngest ever captain.
“It was certainly a surprise to be appointed. I had started to become a voice in the dressing room and a bit of a leader among the lads. I’d also done a bit of captaincy with the second team and the juniors, but it was still a surprise. Anthony McGrath had been captain in 2009 and didn’t score many runs that year. He himself will admit, he wasn’t a natural captain and didn’t enjoy it. He felt captaincy had taken a bit away from his own game. Martyn Moxon told me that his recommendation to the board was going to be me and would I take it. I was a bit shell shocked really. I knew Matthew Hoggard wanted it and he ended up leaving. But you don’t turn down jobs like that down.”
Andrew’s first season nearly saw Yorkshire lift the title. “I was fortunate I had some good senior players around me who had no aspirations to do the captaincy, so they had my back and believed I was the right man for the job. That helped me a lot in the first year. We were a young team, but we had a very good year and if it wasn’t for a bad last day of the season, we might have won the championship. So, for me it was great start and I thought captaincy was easy – then we got relegated the following year!”
Embed from Getty ImagesI asked Andrew what he learnt most in that initial phase of his captaincy. “I quickly realised when you’re captain the stuff on the field is the easy part. Choosing bowlers, setting fields etc. The hardest part of captaincy is off the field; getting the best out of your players off the field, selecting the right team, communication. As captain, cricket is different to any other sport. Off the field is where you earn your money.”
In November 2011, Yorkshire appointed Jason Gillespie as head coach and this appointment was the catalyst for Andrew and the side to experience a sustained period of success, that a county like Yorkshire expected.
“You talk about right place, right time. And that was Dizzy. Looking back, the best thing to happen to us, was getting relegated. It allowed us to play a load of young players, that we probably couldn’t have done if were still in the first division. The second division allowed us to play them all at once. Ballance, Root, Bairstow, these sorts of guys. We just threw them in. Paul Farbrace came in to join Dizzy, we had a good group of senior players and we brought in a few good additions from outside, such as Jack Brooks, Liam Plunkett and Ryan Sidebottom. Dizzy freed us all up. There had always been a ‘this is the way Yorkshire do things’, Dizzy threw that out of the window. He brought in a mentality of ‘go out there and play’, ‘express yourself’, ‘take the positive option’. We developed an Australian culture. If we won a game of cricket we’d go out and celebrate it together. He freed up all the guys and treated everyone like adults and it really worked for us. The players went out and expressed themselves and we ended up getting promoted in second place in that first year, despite having lost 60 percent of our overs to bad weather.”
Following promotion, Yorkshire won impressive back to back county championships, and nearly won a third, but for a final day defeat away at Middlesex. I asked Andrew what made the new team so special? “The young lads we had. They gained so much experience and grew as players. We developed a different mentality to what I grew up with. Those lads expected to win games. They had the hunger and desire and that confidence filtered throughout the team. In a way, we almost had an arrogance of ‘we’re Yorkshire, we only need to bat once, score 500 bowl them out twice’ that was our expectation. We just knew someone would always step up a score a hundred or take a five-for.”
Embed from Getty ImagesAnd what made Dizzy so special as a coach? “He just kept things simple. We didn’t really do that much pre-match stuff, our game plans were simple. He’d write on the white board, ‘Score as many runs as you can. Bowl them out for less.’ Even our lads could understand that! There was obviously a process involved in that. He was a big believer in the bowling attack bowling a fuller length, not top of off, but knee-roll, he was big on that because he’d been a perfectionist at that himself. He was a lot harsher on the bowlers than he was on the batters. With the batters he was good at keeping things calm. If we were 20/4 he would have the same laugh with us in the dressing room, as he would if we were 300/2, he knew how to keep things calm. It’s something now I’m a coach, I’ve tried to learn from. As someone who’s a bit more emotional than Diz, I’ve tried to learn to be less twitchy about things and have the right body language around the players.”
Embed from Getty ImagesWinning back to back titles is a big achievement, was it upsetting being so close to a third? “To be honest we bossed it in 2014, but after that we were on a bit of a decline, which got masked by individual performances. 2014 was a complete team effort, but in 2015, Jonny Bairstow had a phenomenal season. He had a point to prove with England and averaged nearly a hundred that year for us. The number of times we were 30/3 and Jonny would come in and rescue us and hit a hundred… 2016 we weren’t at our best, so it was an achievement in itself to take it to the last day.”
I asked Andrew, was that slight decline to do with the fact that because those youngsters had done so well, England’s gain, was Yorkshire’s loss? “People often say that, but we never really saw it like that. People like Jonny and Rooty who go up a level, dominate and earn a central contract, it’s quite an easy transition for us to manage really because we expect not to see them. If we get Rooty for one or two games, it’s a bonus. Internationally, it’s when call ups come out of the blue, that we weren’t expecting so hadn’t planned for. That happened to us a few times. It’s hard to replace those players because you hadn’t planned for it. You give some young lads an opportunity, but you have to give them time and appreciate they’ll be inconsistent. At the end of the day though, we’re here in county cricket to produce England players.”
And what impact do the likes of Joe Root and Jonny Bairstow have on the young players at Yorkshire? “They set a standard for everyone else. Our academy lads can see that they can go through our system and go on to captain England. There will be another player from our academy in the next 5/10 years who will go on to dominate international cricket, because our youngsters can see it’s possible if they go on and perform for Yorkshire.”
Following that 2nd place finish in 2016, Jason Gillespie moved back to Australia and Andrew stepped up from captaincy to become Yorkshire’s head coach for the 2017 season. “Again, I didn’t see it coming. In 2016 I’d had a pretty lean year with the bat. I wasn’t enjoying my cricket, if I’m honest. I remember a game against Lancashire I got an 80 and batted really well, but I walked away from that game, not really feeling anything. That wasn’t me. I felt cricket had just become a job. I remember speaking to Martyn Moxon halfway through the year and discussing potentially retiring. I had a year left on my contract, and he said he felt I should carry on, even if it wasn’t as captain. Just have a year to myself and I would have carried on. But at the end of season I met with Martyn to go through all of the applicants for the head coach role and he said to me, that he felt there was no-one who stood out to him and that he thought the best person was me.”
Embed from Getty ImagesHad coaching always been on the radar? “I owned a coaching company since I was 21, so it was, but I always thought I’d have to move away from Yorkshire initially, get some experience elsewhere, and eventually build up to becoming a head coach. But like captaincy, the opportunity arose from nowhere and I thought sod it, let’s give it a go!”
And how easy or difficult was the transition from captain to coach? “We’ve had a transitional time as a club. It’s not easy for any team who loses a coach, but we lost the captain and coach. As a coach, of course you want to win championships, but it takes time with young players. They will be inconsistent. They will make mistakes, but they’ll come through that. We’ve had to let some experienced players go to let these young players come through. That is always tough. We also had challenges with the captaincy. Gary Ballance didn’t really enjoy it but Patto over the past 18 months has been fantastic. Success just takes time, we knew the transition was coming, it probably just came a year or two quicker than we thought it would. It probably took me two and a half years to get us back to the stage where we’re now feeling like we did in 2013/2014.”
And you can tell this is where Andrew’s lockdown frustration is coming from. “Absolutely. It feels like this season was going to be the season we’ve worked three years to get to. My original remit as coach was to come in and get us get through the transition and not fall off a cliff into division two in that process. This season is what we’d been building towards.”
One of the areas I wanted to ask Andrew about was overseas players, and with all of the tournaments that happen around the world these days, how challenging is the signing of overseas players for county coaches? “It’s a nightmare. We’ve signed players who have under-performed or they sign and then the goalposts get changed. Until someone gets off the plane and starts playing cricket for you, you don’t know if it’ll happen. We’ve had players in the past where an international team will drop a one-off series against Afghanistan or Zimbabwe, with a few month’s notice and you lose the player. As a coach you think you’ve got your business done early, you’ve planned the season and then everything changes. That said, if you get a player at the right time, it can be fantastic. For example, we had Kane Williamson when he was first breaking onto the scene and he was gold dust for us.”
And what about the strength of county cricket. How does it compare to other competitions around the world? “It’s really strong. Having seen a bit of domestic cricket in Australia, over the last couple of seasons, I think our structure is really strong across all formats. The Blast is strong, and the championship is very strong. I honestly believe we have the strongest domestic league in the world.”
I asked Andrew when looking back at his career, was there any tinge of disappointment at not getting full England honours?
“You always grow up with the ambition of playing for England. There’s always a little bit of disappointment when it doesn’t happen. You do need a little bit of luck, and right time, right place. I did well for the Lions and averaged 50 or so but England were very strong in my playing days. They won the Ashes in Australia, they won in India, so the door was shut really. And there was probably another five players outside of the team, who were ahead of me and couldn’t get in the team. You have to remember England had, Bell, Trott, Collingwood, Pietersen, Strauss, Cook all scoring runs. But over the last couple of years there’s a lot of chopping and changing, so right time, right place does play a part with international selection. But if I’m totally honest with myself, I wasn’t good enough.”
It might not have happened in the playing days, but there’s no reason it cannot happen with the coaching in future. You read it here first.
Andrew Gale – a legend in Yorkshire cricket.
