David Saker is to work as England’s fast bowling coach throughout the red-ball summer, reprising the role he took during the successful Ashes campaigns of 2010-11 and 2013. The Australian, who is with the white-ball squad in Bangladesh, has agreed a short-term deal after being approached by Ben Stokes during last year’s T20 World Cup.
“I don’t think I’ll do much Test cricket, but I’m doing the Ashes,” he said. “Ben said: ‘I’d like to get you involved in the Ashes.’ Rob Key had already floated it a little bit, but being so busy I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to do it. Once Stokesy pushed it, it made it an easy decision. I said yes straight away because of the magnitude of the occasion. I’ve been involved in Ashes with both parties and the cricket is as exciting as it gets. It’s the biggest Test event.”
The 56-year-old was England’s fast bowling coach between 2010 and 2015, during which time they won the Ashes in Australia, successfully defended them at home and won a series in India for the first and only time since 1984-85. He then fulfilled a similar role for Australia from 2016 to 2019.
“Working with England the first time was so much fun,” he said. “I’m really looking forward to the opportunity to do the Ashes with this group because they are the best team in the world to watch at the moment.
“To win Ashes and big series you need a good battery of fast bowlers and that is definitely the case about England. You can say the same about the Australians, but playing on your home patch is always an advantage for a bowling group. It’s exciting if we can have Jofra [Archer] and [Mark] Wood available. Whether you play them together is another thing, but you need that pace against the Australians. The thing those sorts of bowlers can do, they can bowl a spell that can crack a game open.”
Saker will continue to work with the white-ball team who, after the conclusion of their T20 series in Bangladesh on Tuesday, where they trail 2-0 with a game to play, do not play again until September, with an ODI World Cup starting the following month. He is also contracted to coach Melbourne Renegades in Australia’s Big Bash League, which starts in mid-December.
The England role means he will link up again with Jimmy Anderson and Stuart Broad, who were key players when Saker last worked with the team. “Baz [Brendon McCullum] will pick a team that he thinks will win and he’ll explain what he wants from the players and then it’s my job to make sure they can deliver that,” he said.
“The evolution of Jimmy and Broady, they’re so confident in what they can do and they just go out and do it. That’s what you want from your bowling group. My job is to make sure the bowlers are doing that.
“It’s also creating an atmosphere in the dressing room that’s enjoyable. There’s no doubt that people are enjoying turning up to that Test team. It sounds like it’s a small thing, but the dressing room atmosphere is a huge thing in international cricket.
“We’re playing a Test against Ireland and then we’ve got a week or so before we get together [for the Ashes]. That Irish Test sits quite well for us and you can build it from there. The key is to have a group of fast bowlers ready to get selected, so it makes it tough for the selection committee to make a decision. When you get that you usually get a pretty strong team.”
Anderson has become an unofficial coach-cum-mentor for England’s red-ball seamers in the absence of a specialist bowling coach. “I wouldn’t have said back in 2009, or even before that, that Jimmy would be a coach,” he said. “But you do evolve and he would have become more a leader in that dressing room since I left.
“He might have the urge to do it and with his knowledge it would be stupid not to. But he can be a really grumpy bastard, so he probably wouldn’t make the dressing room all that much fun.”
