Big shoes to fill... but Gale is up to the task
FROM teaching kids with tennis balls to presiding over one of the most treasured counties in English cricket – that is the gargantuan leap of faith Yorkshire have just taken on Andrew Gale.
But if any rookie has the temperament to cope with the demands at Headingley, it is Gale, according to one of the men who knows him best. A total of 16 applicants were considered in the hunt to replace Jason Gillespie, the Australia fast bowler turned superstar head coach who had helped mastermind two County Championship successes in the last three years.
Ultimately, the board opted to replace him with their 32-year-old captain, who has no previous coaching experience outside the company he set up with former teammate Chris Taylor, Pro Coach Cricket Academy, in 2006. And even then it is hardly a venture from which he can draw many translatable skills.
“He did some coaching early on, we were both initially trying to get the company off the ground. But it was very much grassroots, coaching Under-13s with tennis balls – a million miles away from coaching a first-class county,” explained Taylor.
The pair, both on the professional staff when Yorkshire won the County Championship in 2001, met while working their way through the academy ranks and their friendship grew so close that they were best man at each other’s wedding.
Their lives have taken different paths since they split as business partners in 2014 but – even given Gale’s lack of experience – Taylor was not taken aback by this week’s announcement.
“I saw him two months ago and I said to him ‘I’m going to put a tenner on you becoming the next head coach’,” added the former batsman. “He laughed it off and told me I was wasting my money. But I had this inkling, even though they were speaking to people like Paul Farbrace, that it would be the time for him as he’d not had the best season with the bat.
“It gives Yorkshire continuity rather than someone coming in with new beliefs and ideas – OK, they didn’t win their third County Championship in a row but they came very close.”
Gale scored 14,000 runs all told for Yorkshire and though he had a woeful 2016 – contributing just two half-centuries across 15 firstclass matches – he never lost the respect of his teammates.
Alex Lees, almost certainly the club captain in waiting, had already implored Gale to remain as skipper into 2017.
Instead, Gale has simply taken a step up rather than down and his record as a leader, Taylor believes, will far outweigh any worries over his coaching.
“I retired just as he was made captain so I never got to play under him,” he added. “But knowing him as a best friend, he was strong-willed, strong-minded – if you were going over the top to war you would want him right there with you.
“He led from the front and what stands out most for me is that he wouldn’t ask you to do anything he wouldn’t do himself. He’d admit himself he wasn’t the best player in the team, when you’ve got players like Joe Root at Yorkshire, but the England boys all respect him for his beliefs and character.
“The team has always come first for him and that’s what has stood him in good stead.”
Martyn Moxon will mark his decade as director of cricket next year while Ian Dews and Richard Damms, the brains behind Yorkshire’s academy system, will continue to weave their magic.
Therefore, as far as the day-today running is concerned, very little is likely to change – though the Yorkshire dressing room will certainly be on the end of a tongue-lashing more often than under Gillespie, according to Taylor.
“Whereas Gillespie takes a back seat and watches from afar, Andrew is pretty much the opposite – heart on his sleeve, and gives guys a dressing down when it’s needed,” added Taylor, who now runs equipment retailer All Rounder Cricket. “There’s nothing right or wrong with that approach but I can see him getting the best out of a great group of players. He is a big thinker of the game and very big on man-management and I think when you get to county level it’s how people are managed and how to bring out the best in individuals.”
Gale joins Gloucestershire’s Richard Dawson, Chris Silverwood and his assistant at Essex, Anthony McGrath, and Craig White – recently appointed at Hampshire – as Yorkshire stalwarts turned county coaches.
And Taylor considers it no coincidence that the county game is not only embracing more Yorkshiremen but a younger generation.
“It’s not just those at the top who have gone into coaching. A lot have gone into private school coaching or set up their own companies,” said Taylor. “It’s a natural progression because not everyone has got working experience outside of cricket.
“When you’ve worked in the coalface as a senior player in the dressing room – especially in this era – then it can be a good transition.
“I think counties are looking for younger coaches in their 30s and 40s who have experienced the changes in one day and t20 cricket over the last decade, gone are the days of the 60-year-old coach. Richard Dawson and Chris Silverwood have proved that, hopefully Andrew does too.”