New Australia Cricket Coach

Tim Nielsen

Tim played 101 first-class matches for South Australia and retired in 1999 to become an assistant coach to the Redbacks. He then graduated to the role of assistant coach to John Buchanan with the Australian men’s team, and subsequently took on the head coach role at the Centre of Excellence.

In this month's Inside Australian Cricket, we put some questions to the new man at the helm of the Australian team.


1. The guys are taking a well earned break at the moment or playing a spot of county cricket. When will you reconvene and start to plan and train for 2007-08?

We have the planning well under way – and I expect the players will be slowly starting their physical work over the next few weeks – it will all depend on what their workload has been and post season injuries that required surgery or rehab time.

Justin Cordy our Strength and Conditioning manager will ensure all players have an individual program to get them up and ready for the new summer.


2: A lot has been said about the changing of the guard within the Australian team. What sort of team can Australian fans expect to see when they next take the field?

Good question. Ideally one that has a couple of new faces replacing the players we have had retire, and one that continues to play aggressive, positive cricket. It will be exciting for the Australian public to have some different players as their idols and heroes from next summer!


3: Your first official engagement with the team is at the first ever Twenty20 World Championship. What are your thoughts on the tournament?

Twenty20 cricket is a real test of each individual's skills – if you don’t get it just right you can be punished! From this perspective it will be a really good vehicle to get our skills up to speed before our One-Day series in India and then the Australian summer. On top of that, it’s a World Championship, so that will be exciting to be part of and be great to hopefully win!


4: On a personal level, you must be excited to be guiding the world’s best team. Are you able to share some of your goals for your first season in charge?

We have a lot of cricket approaching – possibly 12 Twenty20’s, 34 One-Day Internationals and 14 Tests to end of June 2008 so the main challenge is to work hard at looking after each individual player to ensure we can present our best team injury free for every game.

If we can achieve this, and keep them happy at the same time I think we will be very hard to beat in any form of the game.


5: In order to take this role, you are moving on from your position leading the Centre of Excellence. What is your proudest achievement from your time there?

I’m very proud of the staff we have put together and the fact that over the last couple of years there has been a real want for players to come to the COE to improve their games.

Having Ben Hilfenhaus debut for Australia in One-Day cricket and Adam Voges selected in a Test squad was also very pleasing.


6: What do you think is important in a coach?

Individually, a coach needs to understand each player’s character and game to the extent you can offer assistance before any problem becomes an issue.

The real challenge is to maximise the positive and minimise the impact of bad habits that may creep into a player’s game from time to time.

Collectively it is important to keep an eye well ahead of where you are to ensure that players are getting the physical, technical and mental preparation and rest required to play well ALL the time.


7: What advice would you give to someone who is interested in getting involved in coaching?

Listen to the players and see how you can help them – sometimes saying nothing is the best way to help and very good coaching.


8: Finally, what do you expect to see from India, New Zealand and Sri Lanka when they tour Australia next summer?

Each side has their own character – New Zealand and Sri Lanka are coming off successful World Cup campaigns so they will be difficult and India is on the rebound after a disappointing World Cup, so again very dangerous.

Each side has match winners (e.g. Bond, Tendulkar, and Murali) and it will be important we can play consistently well as a group to negate any impact these players have to give us the best chance of success.