Back to the future for Siddons and SA

At the time Jamie Siddons called stumps on his playing career with a then record 10,643 Sheffield Shield runs in his kit bag, he was widely hailed as the unluckiest cricketer never to have represented Australia in Test matches.

Since that day, but a few weeks into the current millennium, more than 70 players have followed in Siddons’ footsteps wearing the flaming red cap of South Australia and 58 of those have (thus far) endured similar misfortune.

Of the dozen SA players of the current century who have experienced Test cricket, the only two to command a regular Baggy Green Cap have been Ryan Harris (who became an international player after shifting to Queensland) and Nathan Lyon (who returned home to New South Wales after three summers in Adelaide).

There have been others – Damien Fleming, Matthew Elliott, Andrew McDonald, Andy Flower and Younis Khan – who had enjoyed Test careers with Australia or rival nations before being lured to Adelaide Oval.

Phillip Hughes made his Test debut as a New South Welshman, but appeared destined to become a resident SA presence in Australia’s Test line-up until last year’s unthinkable tragedy.

But in the 15 years since Siddons last graced the ground he dominated during South Australia’s most recent but far-too-fleeting ‘golden era’, the truly home-grown Test representatives have been Shaun Tait, Dan Cullen, Graham Manou and Peter George, with all but Tait (3 games) playing a solitary Test.

Given the rarity of losing players to international duties, it would be reasonable surmise that South Australia’s silver lining has been the strength and cohesion of its domestic teams.

However, in the post-Siddons era the sum total of silverware to find a place on SA Cricket Association shelves has been one 50-over title (in 2011-12), a year after Adelaide’s outfit won the last T20 crown before the competition became the franchise-based KFC Big Bash League.

It is to that landscape, and to an organisation rocked to its soul by Hughes’s death in a Bupa Sheffield Shield match last November, that 51-year-old Siddons returns with a grin on his dial, a fire in his belly and the trademark steel in his spine.

“I don’t think I’ve got the smile off my face since I got the phone call, that’s for sure,” Siddons told a media contingent gathered at Adelaide Oval today where his three-year contract as coach of the West End Redbacks was formally announced.

“It is exactly where I want to be, it’s coaching the team I want to coach, it’s first-class cricket and the next best thing to running around with the Australian team - which I’ve done.

“I don’t necessarily want to be there, I want to be here coaching this team and seeing if we can have the success that everyone wants.”

If local sentiment had been included in the latest revamp of the Sheffield Shield bonus points system, then Siddons’ young squad would have already stolen a march on the other five states ahead of the coming summer.

Despite being Victorian-born and having made his initial name in the Bushrangers team that broke through to win the Shield in 1990-91 during a 23-year lean patch, Siddons became an enduring SA hero when he captained the unfancied Redbacks to the title in 1995-96.

“We took a lot of knocks, it was a lot of hard work, we lost a lot of games before we started to win some and then we started to believe,” Siddons said about the win that remains his proudest on-field moment.

“We stopped losing Shield games - we started drawing them and then we started winning them and probably over three or four years we learned that we weren’t the easybeats that I, as a Victorian cricketer playing against (SA) had thought (they) were.”

That the Redbacks have not reached the annual Shield final, let alone replicated that success in the 19 seasons since is not lost on Siddons who served as assistant coach for SA and Australia from 2002-2007 before coaching Bangladesh (2007-2011) and, until today, the Wellington Firebirds in NZ.

“We (South Australia) have been bottom for a long time, it’s going to take three years as stepping stones to improve those skills,” said Siddons, who will oversee his first practice session next Monday when SA pre-season training begins.

“I’d like to think that in three years we’ll be winning titles and we’ll have those players as good as they can be.

“I’ve just spoken to (recently appointed 21-year-old SA skipper) Travis Head and the players are together, they are united which is something I’ve had to work at with a couple of teams I’ve been with lately.

“So I don’t think I need to worry about that, it’s just about giving them some different ways to train and improving their skills from what they’ve got.

“They need to start flying ahead with those things so we can start bowling teams out and making enough runs to win games of cricket.

“It’s as simple as that - there’s no secret to it I don’t think.”

SACA Chief Executive Keith Bradshaw, part of a coaching selection panel that also included former Test ‘keeper Adam Gilchrist, AFL premiership captain and coach David Parkin and former Australia coach Tim Nielsen, said that from the field of 50-plus candidates including a number from overseas and with international experience, Siddons was the unanimous choice.

“He was the outstanding candidate – he was an outstanding cricketer and he is also an outstanding coach,” Bradshaw said of Siddons.

“This is one of the most important appointments that we have made here at SACA in decades, and I am extremely comfortable and thrilled with the outcome.”

While his unquestioned batting talent didn’t earn the nod from Test selectors – he played just one ODI – at a time when Australia was flush with middle-order run makers, Siddons’ earned a reputation as a back-to-the-wall, counter-punching cricketer who revelled in proving critics wrong.

Having taken on coaching roles with struggling international team Bangladesh and then moving to a Wellington set-up that had fallen to the foot of the NZ ladders before jumping at the chance to rejoin SA, it would not be unfair to also characterise him as a champion for lost causes.

But he lifted the Firebirds to two limited-overs trophies during his tenure across the Tasman, and when asked whether his principle remit was to end the drought of SA players making it to Test ranks or to earn some fresh trophies for cabinets at the sparkling new Adelaide Oval, he claimed simply it was both.

“There are no excuses, we’ve got to produce the best cricketers,” Siddons said.

“At the end of the day I just want to see them (the SA players) achieve, I want to see them improve and if we can win titles then that’s the best way of getting both those things in place.

“If we can improve their skills, make them play as a team then we will win titles and we’ll get some (national) representatives.

“I remember Ricky Ponting saying the best skilled teams win the games, and that’s what I’ve got to achieve.”