Gillespie’s appointment brings the state side and the BBL team under one head coach
Daniel Brettig18-Aug-2020Former South Australia spearhead and the Adelaide Strikers coach Jason Gillespie has been named as the next coach of the Redbacks, after the South Australian Cricket Association (SACA) followed the advice of its high-performance reviewer Michael Hussey to place Big Bash League and state teams under the guidance of one supremo.Gillespie was settled upon by an interview panel comprising Hussey, the SACA chief executive Keith Bradshaw, SA high performance chief Tim Nielsen, Cricket Australia executive Belinda Clark and the former selection CA chairman Rod Marsh. He edged out a wide range of other candidates, including the likes of Rob Cassell, Chris Rogers and Ryan Harris.Gillespie, 45, is currently one year into a deal with Sussex in English county cricket that had been due to keep him with the county until 2022 and allowed him to split his time with the Strikers but there will now be a permanent return home. Sussex confirmed on Tuesday that Gillespie would leave at the end of the 2020 season.If Sussex reach the finals of the T20 Blast the season will stretch to October 3 although there is currently no schedule for the Australia domestic summer amid the challenge of drawing up a fixture list in the current climate.”I’m deeply honoured to be afforded the opportunity to coach the South Australian cricket team,” Gillespie said. “The chance to work with the players, coaches and off field team at the SACA is very exciting. Team SACA is something I’m very much looking forward to being a part of.”ALSO READ: South Australia’s ‘culture of mediocrity’ targeted in Mike Hussey reviewKeith Bradshaw, the SACA chief executive, said: “The South Australian men’s head coaching role is the most important in South Australian cricket, and we know that Jason is the right person to invigorate our program and push it forward. He is a proud South Australian with a phenomenal coaching resume behind him, we have seen how he has worked with the Strikers, leading them to their first title, and I know Jason will give it his all to steer the Redbacks in the right direction.”As coach of the Strikers since 2015, when he brokered a deal that allowed him to coach Yorkshire in England, Gillespie has overseen much the more successful of the two programs, winning the BBL in 2018 and also making the tournament finals on two other occasions, including last season when they finished third on the table.Over the same period, the Redbacks have seen results decline alarmingly from a position where, coached by Gillespie’s former state captain Jamie Siddons, they reached the Sheffield Shield final in both 2016 and 2017. A steep slide firmly to the bottom of Australian cricket’s domestic rankings finally resulted in Siddons’ exit from the job earlier this year.Faced with such a marked decline, also pockmarked by problems at high performance pathway and grade cricket levels, the SACA Board called in Hussey to lead a review of the organisation’s elite cricket program, resulting in a document that articulated many long-standing troubles in the state.