Garry MacDonald not to continue as Canterbury coach

Garry MacDonald, Canterbury's coach for the last four seasons, will leave at the end of this term, disappointed by his team's lack of success this season.

MacDonald spoke exclusively to CricInfo today at a rainy Village Green in Christchurch, citing staleness as his reason to move on. "I've had four years now and it's probably time to do something else. I think it's good for the players, after the amount of time I've been with them, to have someone else. It freshens them and I got to make sure I don't get stale myself."

Canterbury have won just one competitive game in ten during 2000/01. They lie bottom of both the Shell Trophy and Shell Cup.

The failure of Canterbury's young players to "kick on" has been as much as a disappointment as Canterbury's Black Caps refusal to play domestic cricket.

This was highlighted by Mathew Sinclair and Jacob Oram's appearances for Central Districts, while Nathan Astle and Craig McMillan pronounced themselves unavailable for the ongoing bottom of the table Trophy clash.

Canterbury's second-string top order collapsed to eight for five in this latest Trophy game, with MacDonald, a former Canterbury player, commenting "we keep losing clumps of wickets. We've been losing four at a time, in strong positions as well, which has been putting us on the back foot."

"We've been off the pace in both competitions. In the Cup our bowling has been very inconsistent. Our batting has been, well, usually we've got enough runs for a Canterbury team to defend. Our fielding and catching has been average. That's got to go up and the bowling's got to be tighter.

The positives this term have been few. Promising performances against the Zimbabwe tourists now mean little, with the lack of success in domestic cricket the benchmark MacDonald is judged on.

Canterbury won the Shell Cup twice in three seasons under MacDonald, but have finished bottom in the Shell Trophy in each of the last two years, having won it in 1997/98.

While MacDonald is hoping to do some specialist spin bowling coaching - "I'm a bit young to retire yet" - there is no word on a successor, who's big hope must be to have a full compliment of internationals at his disposal.