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Spin coach not essential - Hauritz

The absence of a specialist spin-bowling coach in Australia's full-time touring setup is not a major problem, according to the offspinner Nathan Hauritz

Brydon Coverdale
Brydon Coverdale
17-May-2011
Nathan Hauritz has worked with Troy Cooley in the past, and now another former fast man, Craig McDermott, is the bowling coach  •  Getty Images

Nathan Hauritz has worked with Troy Cooley in the past, and now another former fast man, Craig McDermott, is the bowling coach  •  Getty Images

The absence of a specialist spin-bowling coach in Australia's full-time touring setup is not a major problem, according to the offspinner Nathan Hauritz. Craig McDermott is Australia's new bowling coach and his brief, like that of his predecessor Troy Cooley, includes mentoring the slow men as well as the fast bowlers.
McDermott took 291 Test wickets off the long run-up and would seem as qualified to help the spinners as he would be to advise the batsmen. But Hauritz said while it was in theory a positive to have a specialist on hand to assist the slow bowlers, the information overload provided by an extra coaching staff member was not necessarily a good thing.
"It is good, it gives you someone else to talk to about fields and tactics, but sometimes it can confuse things," Hauritz told ESPNcricinfo. "You can have too much. It can be a bit overwhelming at the end of the day.
"There's so much technology these days. Any spin coach can watch the footage or you can sit down and have a chat over the net, Skype or anything like that. Craig McDermott's experience and record speaks for itself. I think he'll be invaluable for the side. And he's going to offer different opinions about spin bowling as well. It's all going to be worth listening to."
Australia typically don't take a spin coach on tours, although the Centre of Excellence mentor John Davison has travelled with the side, as he did on last year's Test tour of India. England, on the other hand, use the former Pakistan spinner Mushtaq Ahmed as a specialist coach, and his former team-mate Saqlain Mushtaq has advised the New Zealand spinners.
Australia's spin stocks are not exactly brimming with world-class talent, and an international expert might be of use to give Hauritz and his colleagues a different perspective. He said when bowling in the nets on a tour, it was usually the batsmen to whom he turned for advice, as they had a good view of how he was performing.
"They've generally got the best idea of how the ball is coming down, whether they're getting beaten in flight, the lines, what sort of fields you'd set," Hauritz said. "That's what I like to work with. When you're bowling against those guys, if you're doing the right thing and the ball is arriving in the right way, they can give you the best response. If not, then you can work on it from there."

Brydon Coverdale is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo