Ex Bangladesh cricket coach excited by Fiji challenge

Transcript

A former Bangladesh cricket coach has been tasked with lifting the performance of Fiji's national teams.

Australian Shane Jurgensen spent two and a half years as Bangladesh national coach before resigning last month.

He's signed a three-year contract to coach both the Fiji's Men's and Women's national sides, as well as Fiji's age-grade teams, and told Vinnie Wylie he's looking forward to a new challenge.

SHANE JURGENSEN: I dedicated so much to the role in Bangladesh and had to do so many things that were outside what I actually had to do as a coach and I think, after a while, it just wore me down and I just felt I needed to move on and I have and I'm really excited about this. I think this role brings be back to why I started coaching in the first place and coming back to the love of coaching and wanting to help people develop and develop. I think that's where I started a long time ago, when I'm in my early twenties, when I was still playing first-class cricket, and then stumbled into being president of the junior cricket club and all of a sudden a number of parents wanted me to help their kids and that started my business and it just grew from there. And then of course just before I came to New Zealand I was a club coach so it's just a great opportunity [and] I'm really excited about it.

VINNIE WYLIE: And there's a lot of facets to it: obviously you've got the men's national team, you've got the women's national team and also age grade, so it will be keeping you busy.

SJ: Yeah that's the thing, it's definitely a coaching-based role and that's one of the big factors that I'm really looking forward to is I will be doing a lot of coaching and I'm so excited to be going to a very popular place. They want to improve their cricket, they want to get better and I'm just excited that I'm going to be the person that is leading that with the players.

VW: In terms of on-field results it probably hasn't been the best 6-12 months. The women's team didn't compete in the T20 East Asia Pacific event that wrapped up at the weekend and the men's team obviously is I guess in the wilderness a bit, the way the World Cricket Leagues have been restructured, having failed to retain their spot in Cricket League - how do you sort of go about that challenge?

SJ: The view will definitely have to be definitely a long-term view. Literally this has all just happened so I'm still coming to grips with what will have to happen and what we need to do but I think what's going to be really important is the relationships with all the support staff and those in Cricket Fiji, and then really look to put together a plan with a long-term vision that's going to be important for long-term consistency [and] long-term success on the field. Just looking briefly yesterday they started a new high performance squad of players that were selected from their Easter tournament. That's exciting and it sounds like a very young group so with that type of age group you can do nothing but work on simple things, both individually and as a group, and look to try and get as much playing opportunities as possible. I know that later in the year [there is] an exciting tour to India and then some qualification event in Lismore after that so there's a lot of cricket coming up.