Cosgrove reveals reason for SA return

Mark Cosgrove has returned home to South Australia having consigned to history the rocky landscape he left behind and embracing, instead, a greenfields vision of what he sees ahead.

Cosgrove, regarded by many as the brightest home-grown batting prodigy South Australia has produced since Darren Lehmann, departed Adelaide for Tasmania five summers ago after the local set-up publicly conceded it had nothing more to offer him.

At that stage, South Australia had finished bottom of the Bupa Sheffield Shield ladder and was searching for answers to its woes.

Cosgrove duly took his talent across Bass Strait where he was integral to Tasmania winning its second Shield as the competition’s leading runs scorer while the Redbacks remained anchored at the other end of the table.

But having been part of another Shield-winning season on 2012-13 and then offered a two-year contract extension by the Tigers at the end of last summer, Cosgrove surprised many by opting to return to the State that had spurned him and don the Croweater colours once more.

The reason, as the 30-year-old left-hander happily explained at this week’s SA season launch, was a sense of duty to try and return the Shield to Adelaide where it has resided just once in the last 30 years, making the Redbacks easily the least successful domestic outfit of the modern era.

Cosgrove’s confidence in the turnaround of his home State’s fortunes since his departure is based on the depth of young talent he sees emerging through its once barren grade ranks, and the leadership and ability that he feels he and his fellow senior players can bring.

“It’s great coming home, but you don’t want to come home and just drop into the background,” Cosgrove said.

“We want to win stuff this year and we think we can.

“The squad – you look at the likes of (young batsmen) Travis Head and Kelvin Smith and you throw a couple of older guys in there the likes of Bots (captain Johan Botha) and Ferg (Australian one-day batsman Callum Ferguson) and hopefully Taity (reinvigorated fast bowler Shaun Tait).

“It’s an exciting time for South Australia, and the there’s nothing more I want than to walk out there (Adelaide Oval) holding the big Shield over my head, and bring it back to Adelaide.”

Unless the national selectors pull a shock and reprise their 2006 inclusion of Cosgrove in the Australian ODI line-up, his first opportunity to re-acquaint himself with the home team’s dressing room at his beloved Adelaide Oval won’t come until the end of this month.

That’s when the West End Redbacks are scheduled to open their Bupa Sheffield Shield campaign.

But Cosgrove, along with his SA coach Darren Berry, laments that the new-look schedule of the Matador One Day Cup, being played in its entirety over the next three weeks, means matches are restricted to venues in Brisbane and suburban Sydney.

“I just love playing at Adelaide Oval on a Friday night, and at the big stadiums,” Cosgrove said.

“Playing at AB Field (in Brisbane) and Bankstown (in Sydney) doesn’t have the same feel, but we’ll just go anywhere we’re told to play and play well.”

Berry echoed his new recruit’s thoughts about fans beyond metropolitan Queensland and New South Wales being unable to watch their teams play, but both acknowledged the unique scheduling log-jam and circumstances that have been created by the upcoming ICC World Cup in February and March.

“We would love to play (in Adelaide) in front of our fans and I don’t shy away from that,” Berry said.

“We would love to play one-day cricket here but the model is what it is, and I think it’s been designed around the World Cup to try and play a sort of mini-World Cup in the domestic series.

“Whether or not that changes next year, personally I would love it to because we would like to play in front of our home fans in one-day cricket.

“We’ve got a magnificent facility,(Adelaide Oval, one of) the best in the world and I would hope in the future that we can play one-day cricket out here.”

However, Ferguson took a less parochial, more pragmatic view of the redesigned domestic one-day competition that was compressed into short, tournament-style form last summer having previously been spread through the entire Australian summer.

“What the Matador Cup format does provide is an opportunity to get off to a good start and then carry that momentum through in a short space of time,” said Ferguson, who is looking to the series beginning on Saturday to re-establish his national credentials.

“It can be difficult to regain form if you start without making too many runs – it can be tough to drag that back and turn it around with not long between games.

“But if you get a good start you can certainly pile them on in a short space of time and really put your name up in lights.

“So it provides some difficulties but also some real bonuses”.