da dobrowin： It has been a tough first year as Hampshire’s football-style manager for Paul Terry.
da 888： Simon Walter (Daily Echo)29-Sep-2003It has been a tough first year as Hampshire’s football-style manager for Paul Terry.”I knew there would be a lot of challenges, but I’ve enjoyed it – I don’t think I look too much older or greyer,” he said after Hampshire managed to win promotion to the National League despite losing a FOURTH successive match at Derby last week.”I played for Hampshire for 17 years and we never seemed to do anything easy,” added Terry.”I’d love us to be able to do things in a canter. I don’t know why it is, whether it’s the Hampshire air, but we never seem to be able to do that.”The last day of the 2003 season encapsulated Hampshire’s fraught season.John Crawley, who captained the side in the absence of the banned Shane Warne, was grateful to Shoaib Ahktar, who had been targeted as a replacement for Warne at the start of the season, for Durham’s win against Middlesex which ensured Hampshire’s promotion.It has been an even tougher season for Crawley, who was dropped by England soon after taking over the Hampshire captaincy – but at least he was able to celebrate promotion as the season came to end on his birthday.”I feel more like 42, not 32,” he said, before confirming that he will hand over the captaincy to Warne next year.Terry is now back in Perth where he will be coaching the likes of Lawrie Prittipaul and James Bruce at his AusAcademy this winter, while reflecting on his first season as Hampshire manager and planning for the second.”At the start of the year the aim was to get promoted in the two leagues,” he said.”We’ve done that in the one dayers so at the end of the year I guess that makes a reasonable season, but we need to improve an awful lot to consolidate what we’ve got and do a lot better in four-day cricket as well.”Indeed. For had Hampshire not lost their final first class game of the season at Derbyshire instead of winning it, the Hawks would have finished with the championship wooden spoon for the first time in 23 years.As it was, they finished 17th out of 18 with just one win in 16 championship matches – meaning just three victories in 36 Frizzell matches since the start of the 2002 campaign.Warne’s year-long suspension for taking a banned drug derailed Hampshire’s season before it had even started – and that was followed by the mid season retirements of Wasim Akram and Ed Giddins, both of whom turned out to be disastrous signings.”Shane Warne was going to be the centre of the whole side as well as captain so that was difficult one,” added Terry.”You never like to have those problems at the start of a season but these things happen, you have to deal with them.”Very few teams go through a whole season without having overseas players unavailable so I certainly wouldn’t use that as an excuse.”In the end we dealt with it pretty well. We got Chaminda Vaas into the side and he showed what a quality player he is.”Handing over the captaincy to Crawley was Hampshire’s other way of coping without Warne, but that, together with his England omission, contributed to what the former Lancashire man ranks as the worst season of his career.”By giving John the responsibility, and other things that have happened, meant he has had to move up and down the order and that has taken its toll on him,” Terry continued.”John’s one of our key players and we need him playing well. He’s played well in one day cricket and by a lot of people’s standards he’s done quite well in the four dayers.”But I know he won’t be happy with what he’s done so hopefully freeing him from that the captaincy will make us a stronger side.”The season at least ended with some hope for the future.Little can be read into a ten-wicket win against Derbyshire, the only team to finish below Hampshire, but three career best performances for James Hamblin, with bat and ball, and James Tomlinson, the quickest bowler on the staff, has done their confidence some good.Terry, though, reckons there is room for improvement from his young guns.”In the last two or three months we’ve brought a number of young players through and hopefully they’ll become better players for that,” he reasoned.”But we need them to ask questions and learn more from our senior players. We’ve backed them, played them and given them contracts and now it’s up to them.”Simon Katich has been so good for us this year, he has added some steel, and if one or two of our younger players can take that and bring that into the whole outlook of their cricket then they’ll become better for it.”I’m not sure enough of our guys do that and, if they’re not prepared to listen and learn, then unfortunately we’ll be in a similar situation to what we’ve been in for the last few years.”That’s why you bring people like Kat to the club.”At various stages Derek Kenway has shown what he can do but he needs to be doing a lot more.”If he just follows the example of Kat, about the way he looks after himself off the field and the way he prepares himself for games, he’ll be better for it.”Hamblin, Bruce and Prittipaul – who all impressed for Hampshire’s Trophy-winning 2nd XI in 2003 – were all handed contracts earlier this month.”We know they have talent but it’s no good doing it every now and then,” added Terry.”The challenge is to do things consistently.”In terms of stats no one has really impressed but we’ve gained a lot from Jimmy Adams, he’s going to be a very good cricketer for us.”James Tomlinson has improved as he’s gone along, so has James Bruce and Derek’s improved.”There have been other pluses, particularly with the Academy and the 2nd XI doing so well.”Terry is now looking to add another “three or four players” to the staff as well as Warne.Gaps need to be filled as Robin Smith’s retirement earlier this month was followed by John Francis’ decision not to accept a new contract.In addition, Alex Morris and Iain Brunnschweiler were not retained.Terry has already confirmed that neither Dominic Cork or Usman Afzaal, two former England players who are leaving Derbyshire and Notts respectively, are on his wanted list and the county this week failed to land Surrey batsman Ian Ward.”I’m very keen to try and bring on a lot of they guys that we have but we need to increase the quality as well.””We’ll certainly have three or four, which will probably make us short of what we had (in terms of numbers) at the start of the year, but I’m wary of making shortterm decisions”We’ll just have to see what we’ve lost and fill the gaps, but we certainly haven’t got enough batters or bowlers.”Players have been released but they’ve been released for a reason and it’s a misconception that we have a lot of money to spend.”People look at Rod (Bransgrove, Hampshire chairman) and the Rose Bowl and think we can just throw money around.”That isn’t the case and it doesn’t always make you a better side to chuck the money around.”
