South Africa have continued the rebuilding of their support staff under new coach Russell Domingo by appointing Adrian Birrell as his assistant while Claude Henderson has been recruited on a consultancy basis as a specialist spin bowling coach.
The appointments are the next stage in recruiting technical staff to help Domingo, who has taken charge of the national side following Gary Kirsten’s decision not to renew his contract earlier this year.
Domingo’s task in taking the Proteas through to the next ICC World Cup in Australia and New Zealand in 2015 should be made easier having the experience of 52-year-old Birrell alongside him, who boasts an impressive coaching CV including spells as coach of Ireland and England under-19s.
Under Birrell’s guidance, Ireland reached the second stage of the 2007 World Cup in West Indies, where they beat Pakistan and Bangladesh and tied with Zimbabwe. He has already worked with Domingo at provincial and franchise level and the pair guided Chevrolet Warriors to the final of the Champions League t20 tournament in 2010.
“Adrian will take special responsibility for mentoring our franchise coaches,” explained Domingo. “We intend to involve these coaches in our tours when circumstances permit. He will also be the specialist fielding coach.”
Henderson, now 41, has just retired from first class cricket after taking more than 900 wickets during his career and represented the Proteas in seven Tests, and will be available in his new role for 100 days a year, which is an identical arrangement to the one they have with Performance Coach Paddy Upton.
“We’ve been keen to appoint a specialist spin bowling coach for some time now, particularly as we will be playing a lot of cricket in Asia in the year ahead,” revealed Domingo. “Claude will accompany the team for the two away tours to Sri Lanka and to the UAE to play Pakistan and then, of course, we have the ICC World Twenty20 coming up in Bangladesh next year.”
“When Claude is not working full-time with the Proteas he will continue to assist at the High Performance Centre with the South Africa A and Emerging squads and will thus have a very good insight into the next level of talent coming through the system.”
South Africa are still looking to appoint a successor to Rob Walter as conditioning coach.
They have appointed Greg King, the conditioning coach attached to the High Performance Centre, for this month’s tour to Sri Lanka as an interim measure but are seeking a more permanent arrangement.
James Buttler
As the editor of World Cricket Badger he is intent on building the website to give quality coverage of the domestic game around the world.
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