Fleming offers his services as bowling coach

With increasing calls for Australia to hire a specialist fast bowling coach, Damien Fleming, working for the last two years developing young pacemen for Australia, has thrown his name in the hat of potential candidates.

As Cricket Australia considers appointing specialist assistants to John Buchanan, Fleming, who recently left as head of the national Pace Australia program, said he would love the chance to work with the country's senior bowlers if it arose.

Fleming was quoted by AAP as saying, "if a position was going, I would be very keen. I have spent the past couple of years running the Pace Australia program and it was a good two years for me to develop my knowledge in the biomechanics side of things and work with sports scientists, as well as working with young bowlers."

He continued, "I would like to work with the elite squad, and it would be important to be able to deal with a young bowler coming through, who might have technical problems, through to the more experienced bowlers, for whom it might be goal-setting or something like that you work on."

Fleming also spoke of the lack of young fast bowling depth in Australia at the moment calling for Jason Gillespie's potential contribution to Australia to be re-examined. "The thing is there has only been one Glenn McGrath in more than 100 years of Test cricket. Between (Dennis) Lillee and (Jeff) Thomson and McGrath, we had guys like Craig McDermott and Merv Hughes, who were very good bowlers. Maybe we are at the stage where we get a guy who can play for three to six years and give us good service.

"The next cabs off the rank are all in their late 20s or early 30s, guys like Nathan Bracken (28), Stuart Clark (30) and Mick Lewis (31), but there is a dearth of bowlers aged between 23 and 27 who are ready to go in there and be a 10-year player.

"I think Australia should go back to Gillespie and work with him to get him back into the Test team. He had always been earmarked as a spearhead to take over from McGrath, and at 30, he still has four or five good years in him."

Australia's revamp of their coaching structure began with the appointment of Richard McInnes as a full-time performance analyst.