Inside Word: Finals failures fuel the Tigers

Tasmania coach Adam Griffith hopes the lessons learned from falling short last summer will help his charges go to the next level this season.

In 2017-18, the Tigers finished runners-up to Queensland in the JLT Sheffield Shield while Hobart Hurricanes were beat by Adelaide Strikers in the KFC Big Bash League decider.

Those missed opportunities for silverware have fuelled Tasmania this pre-season as they prepare to head north to Townsville for the JLT One-Day Cup.

"I would say it was a good year, not a great year," Griffith told cricket.com.au reflecting on last season.

"If we had have won both those (finals) it would have been a great year, but I think in hindsight when you do look back at those, when you're in the heat of the battle of those finals, you want to win those games.

"I think that's really set us up and given us that drive and motivation for this pre-season and for the season coming up to push harder to win those games this year and take those lessons we learned in those pressure situations to make us better as players and coaches and staff.

"That's one of my big things around the group, we want to put the players under as much pressure as possible as many times as possible and there's no better way to do that than in finals.

"As long as we learn those lessons from those games then we'll be better next time we're in those situations, and that's the exciting thigs for me this year."

The second start

This summer is Griffith's second in charge since moving east from Western Australia and his coaching tenure in Tasmania began inauspiciously to say the least.

The Tigers lost their first three matches of the JLT Cup last summer, soundly beaten by New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia in the space of six days in Perth.

It was far from an ideal start, but Griffith said the upside was worth the pain as the Tigers rallied to finish just one win from qualifying for the finals.

"For me starting out with the group last year, it was a real good moment (being 0-3) in the fact that that was where we were at probably more mentally with the group," Griffith said.

"It allowed us to really break it all down and learn some lessons, to actually start from scratch and discover how we wanted to play moving forward.

"It allowed us to have some really honest and open conversations and I think the group took that on board and realise that we were in it for the long haul not just for the first game of the season, but for not only last year but the next year and the year after.

"We saw how the group responded throughout the season."

Happy headaches

Tasmania's first match of the JLT Cup is against Victoria on September 19, but just who will take the field for the Tigers is one of Griffith's tougher tasks.

Despite having trained on turf wickets and simulated 50-over matches under the game-changing marquee at home, the Tigers are short on match practice to get a look at their players in action before picking the starting side to take on Victoria.

"One of the hardest issues we've got coming up is selection," Griffith said.

"We've been really happy with how the boys are going and there's a quite a large number of players vying for positions in the first game.

"Not being able to play pre-season matches away from home is going to make those selections a little tougher but as we've been doing a lot of work here to try and identify which guys are going to help us win that first game and once identify that we'll pick that team and announce it."