Captain’s big call
Bailey hands over the reins
TIGERS coach Adam Griffith was prepared for the day George Bailey would hand over the captaincy of the Sheffield Shield and one-day cup sides.
He just wasn’t expecting it to come so soon.
Bailey shocked cricketing circles yesterday when it was announced he would step down as skipper to focus on trying to turn around his own poor Shield form.
The former Australian ODI and T20 captain has managed just 45 runs at an average of 5.6 in eight innings this season.
Matthew Wade, who guided Victoria to Sheffield Shield glory, will take charge and lead the side for the first time when Tasmania hosts South Australia at Blundstone Arena on Tuesday.
Griffith declared the struggling Bailey was not axed, and does not believe the 36-yearold is considering retirement.
“George came to me, we had been having conversations about his game for a little while now, just about how he was going,” Griffith said. “It’s not something that was a surprise for me, when I first came back 18 months ago we did talk about at some stage in his career he just wanted to play and not be captain.
“That discussion happened a little while ago, I was prepared for it but didn’t expect it to happen right now.
“My job is to try and get the best out of our players on the field and if him handing the captaincy over and being able to just concentrate on his batting gets the best out of him, then that’s my job to help facilitate that.
“He is fully committed to playing, he is still a big part of Tasmanian cricket both with the Tigers and the Hurricanes.
“He hasn’t got any retirement plans at this stage to walk away from cricket, our job is just to get him back making runs again.”
The Tigers could have two changes for the clash against the Redbacks, with Beau Webster ruled out for up to eight weeks after suffering a minor dislocation of his knee against Victoria, and Gurinder Sandhu has been dropped.
Australian T20 representative Ben McDermott will replace Webster, while Tigers Academy quick Alex Pyecroft could make his debut.
Test captain Tim Paine also threw his support behind Bailey.
“I have been back for a couple of weeks and George has been talking about it or wrestling with it for a little while,” he said. “George Bailey has earned the right to go for as long as he can.”