Mark Garaway. Photo courtesy of John Boomer / Cricketeurope
Profile:
Name: Mark Garaway
Born: July 20, 1973, Swinton, Wiltshire
Youth: Played club cricket on the Isle of Wight with Ventnor, “a very progressive club.”
1990: At age 17 went to South Africa to be Head Coach at a school. It was his first experience of coaching and it ignited a passion for the non-playing side of cricket.
1991-1999: Played cricket for Hampshire mostly as the reserve wicketkeeper / right-hand bat. Played four first-class matches in all and had a top score of 55.
1995: Malcolm Marshall took the 2nd XI which Garaway was captain of, to the Championship and then Marshall went on to coach the 1st team.
1997: When Marshall became ill with his stomach cancer in 1997, Tim Tremlett moved up to the first team and Garaway became 2nd team player / coach. “At that point I started to think about do I actually want to continue playing or do I want to get into managing and coaching people?”
1997 – 2002: Garaway began do his coaching levels. Level IV started in 2001 and completed in 2002
In 1999 he did his Level 3, which was the first ever Level 3 (of the revamped coaching standards). He completed Level 4 in 2002 with the first group to do it (the group included Peter Moores, Kevin Shine, David Capel and Tim Boon).
1999: Retired from playing and went into Cricket Development and Academy Management in Hampshire CCC.
September 2001: Moved to Somerset as the 2nd team coach/Academy Director. “In effect setting up their Academy.”
September 2004: Somerset won 2nd XI Championship in 2004 with a young team based upon the players who were either in or graduated from the Academy.
November 2004: Became the 1st team coach at Somerset
Summer 2005: Won the domestic Twenty20 competition in 2005 and beat Australia in a one-dayer. “Basically we changed our squad from an ageing squad to an up-and-coming new squad with a lot of the Academy and 2nd team players I had worked with, being the cornerstone of that.”
February 2006: Appointed as England Assistant Coach and Analyst beginning with the England tour of India.
2006- April 2009: “I stayed with three coaches effectively (Fletcher, Moores and the beginning of Flowers) and finished in April 2009. They wanted someone with a more statistical background. I was probably looking to get out after the Ashes 2009 anyway. I had travelled round the world for four years and had toured every country there would be a tour to.
The role with England was excellent but you were always supporting somebody else – you weren’t developing your leadership talents. I learnt a lot about cricket during that time but I wanted to apply that to some structures and to lead some of those structures. I was more than happy to look for pastures new at that point.”
August 2009 – Appointed Operations Director for Cricket Ireland (CI).
MG on Duncan Fletcher:
“Duncan Fletcher was a huge influence on me. I went into the England environment being told be careful how you do this, be careful about that but my relationship with Fletch was probably the most natural I’ve had outside of my family.
He’s a fantastic bloke and his public image is about 180 degrees off what our relationship was like and we remain very close. As far as I’m concerned he’s the best coach in the world.”
CP: So what is the attraction of the role with CI for you?
MG: It’s the ability to influence. That is something I’ve always really enjoyed and under Duncan Fletcher I had it. But as the structures were built up in ECB the opportunities to influence became less and less.
This role is fantastic in that I have the ability to build structures that are going to help Irish cricket.
I wanted to become a leader again.
CP: What are your early impressions of Irish cricket?
MG: The passion for cricket among the players and followers is immense and something I would have been aware of before I took the job.
Another thing that has struck me is the level of support that Cricket Ireland receive from our sponsors RSA and the two Sports Councils (Irish Sports Council and Sport Northern Ireland). This support is fantastic and allows the likes of Warren Deutrom, Phil Simmons, Adi Birrell and myself to plan, programme and administer the rapid growth of cricket within Ireland.
I have been pleasantly surprised by the quality of the younger players. I’ve seen that in all of the squads that I’ve watched. It’s something I probably underestimated. Some of the other areas such as the structures and pathways for players and coaches to work in and along, need some work. It’s great for me because it gives me an area to get my teeth into.
CP: What do you mean specifically by developing structures and pathways for players and coaches?
MG: You want every child coming into the game to see all the different levels he or she can go through. Not every child will progress through every level but at every level we need to ensure it’s a safe environment with good quality coaches, good quality pitches and facilities.
If we have that in place then we create a vacuum where our best quality players can progress to the elite squads which are our Ireland Senior Men’s and Women’s playing in ODIs and T20I’s.
There is work to be done there on both the player’s pathway and the coach’s pathway.
We want our players to be exposed to appropriately qualified coaches as they go up through the pathway. I would say at the moment those two aren’t particularly well aligned as the role of coach education has been untapped to date. There will be a significant shift in this over the coming 12 months.
To be fair, in England we’ve only become aligned in the last few years but it is important we get it right because we have to have the right structures to support players at every level if we are to progress. England uses the phrase ‘from playground to Test arena.’ My aim is to link those (equivalent) environments together in Ireland. So my role is to oversee the work of the Development Officers and help them work with the schools and Clubs to good effect.
CP: So working with the schools is going to be key?
MG: Yes. The great thing about schools is that you have a captive audience. There is a great opportunity to introduce cricket into new areas. The crucial thing is that we then link those environments into the clubs.
Part of our strategy will be to do more with schools and to be more strategic with what schools we go with so there is an outlet into the clubs that the kids can follow. This role wil be overseen by the Development Officers and driven largely by the Clubs and Schools themselves. This approach has been hugely successful in England, Australia and South Africa.
MG on Shane Warne and Kevin Pietersen:
Warne comes across as Jack the Lad but he’s got the sharpest cricket brain you could ever come across and you don’t get that by being Jack the Lad. You get it by listening and by watching really well.
His practise ethic was amazing – very simple. He didn’t bite off more than he could chew.
He used to talk about all these different balls that he had but in the main he used to bowl about three of them.
What he was great at was creating a theatre around him. There were periods during his career when he lost a couple of deliveries through injury but he still retained that aura. It’s something which Kevin Pietersen does pretty well too. One of the things that is really important to stress is that Kevin Pietersen has been England’s best batter over the last four years because he’s fitter than anyone else; he practices better than anyone else and researches the opposition better than anyone else. The best players in the world get those things right.
Shane Warne may not have been fitter than everyone else in terms of aerobic fitness but he was immensely strong which was what his bowling action was about. He was so intelligent about opposition batters.
CP: So do you have a Blueprint, a strategic plan with specific goals and timelines?
MG: We are developing our strategic plan. I’ve come in with a lot of ideas of best practice from around the world but I think the first year or so will be about laying some foundations and then after that we can more clearly define specific goals with timelines.
Without those foundations the targets are pie in the sky. But the basic principle will be over the next 2-3 years will be to align our coach education programs both north and south so we can be very strategic about where we put our resource. Schools will be one of those strategic points. We will aim to develop coaching teams within clubs which are linked to those schools so there’s that seamless flow from school to club.
Simple things like coaches going in and doing presentations to the schools, having posters up on school notice-boards so kids know exactly where to go for example. At present those things happen in a haphazard fashion rather than a strategic fashion. At the moment we have a talent pool which is limited in numbers but big in talent. The crucial thing is that we are broadening the base so we are accessing all the best talent that we possibly can.
If we can increase the numbers coming into the talent pool then all the evidence shows that the talent that comes off the top of that is increased.
MG on Malcolm Marshall:
We were very close. He was a big influence on me as a player and also in the broader aspects of the game.
Malcolm was a fierce competitor but nobody had a bad word to say about him. In that sense similar to Kyle (McCallan) I would say.
He was a great student of the game with a great ability to analyse batters. I used to do a lot of 12th manning for the first team and I used to stand at mid-off. It was the best place to stand when Malcolm was bowling because he told you what he was trying to do.
And his ability to out-think a batter and then obviously to back it up with the ability to expose a batter and get him out was phenomenal. The only other person who I have ever worked with who has done that to that extent was Shane Warne – very similar in their approaches. But it wouldn’t be an instant hit; it would be working somebody out over a period of time.
CP: Where can Irish cricket improve specifically?
MG: Playing against spin is one area where Irish cricket can improve upon significantly. It is not just me but Phil Simmons and Adi Birrell who have identified that and statistically we have identified it too. Then, even though fielding at the top level has been a strength, I do believe that it has still room to develop.
The key areas for me for Irish cricket at High Performance Level are this:
- because of the limited numbers in our talent pool, we need to make sure our players are incredibly fit and physical, because the game is becoming more and more physical.
- along with that we need to make sure we are, at least on a par, if not out-fielding any team we come up against.
Those are two things you can control and they have been the cornerstone of every team I’ve worked with. They are things you can grab hold of and say I’m going to do this.
CP: Are the relationships between the various Unions and CI becoming more aligned?
MG: I think the relationship between CI and the Unions is developing. The Unions have been so strong for so long, there was always going to be a transition period.
I’m relatively new to it but I see it as a pretty good relationship. Munster in particular are extremely keen to push their cricket. We have some very dedicated people at Club level and Union level in Munster who are really desperate to make a difference, which is really exciting – people like Jim Doran, Ted Williamson, Kingsley Jones, John Power and others.
MG on Brian Ashton (former Ireland Rugby Union Coach):
The other guy who has had a big influence on me and an increasing one is Brian Ashton- my mentor back at home.
We bounce ideas for coaching off each other. As well as working in rugby he is doing a bit of work with the ECB at the moment – applying some of his methodologies in cricket.
He’s a sounding board – an increasingly strong influence which has been fantastic.
CP: Are you looking forward to the U19 World Cup?
MG: Absolutely.
We have been working out of Queen’s University at weekends and we had a couple of weekends at Bready before that.
Andy Balbirnie is working four days a week in the gym, working incredibly hard and it shows. He has really responded to the leadership role very well. He has learned the value of doing those things now which wouldn’t necessarily have been his forte before he became captain.
So he is driving the team on as well as his coach, which is exactly the environment we want to create.
We fly out on 1st January to a training camp at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney for a week. Geoff Lawson (the Director of Cricket at UNSW) and I have put that together. Geoff will be at the test match doing some commentary but will be working with us in-between times.
There are two warm-up games. We play the University of NSW who have some first-class cricketers in their ranks and a Grade XI side. We’ll be staying at the University as well which will mean a very self-contained camp with unbelievable facilities, all on our doorstep.
It will be terrific.
We then fly out to Christchurch for our warm-up games on 9th January.
There hasn’t been a cricket team leaving these shores better prepared.
CP: Finally Mark, what would you like your legacy to be for Irish cricket?
MG: To connect an effective coach education program throughout the various environments for Irish cricket. So that is schools, clubs, regional, and international squads.
If I did that I could leave CI knowing that I had played a significant role and left a strong foundation for the further development of cricket in Ireland.
Mark Garaway in conversation with Liam Rooney
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