Cricket Tasmania chairman Andrew Gaggin does not believe Tasmanian cricket is in crisis despite the sacking of both Hobart Hurricanes coach Damien Wright and Tassie Tigers coach Dan Marsh within the space of a month.
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Gaggin defended the decision to terminate Marsh’s contract early on Friday.
He rejected suggestions CT made the wrong decision in reappointing him 18 months ago, or that cricket was at rock bottom with the sacking of two coaches, and denied that a boys’ culture existed within the organisation. He said the process of finding a replacement coach would begin immediately with input from the likes of Ricky Ponting and David Boon alongside the Hobart Hurricanes search and he expected an independent review to be held into CT’s entire cricket operations.
“This has been a difficult decision to make with the coach of the state team – I’ve been on the board for 14 years and the decisions made over the last month with Damien Wright and Dan Marsh have been the most difficult that the board and myself have had to make during my tenure,” Gaggin said.
He described Marsh as an “icon” of Tasmanian cricket for his service over 20 years and acknowledged that in the period when he took over from Tim Coyle the state lost players of the ilk of Mark Cosgrove, Ed Cowan, Ricky Ponting, Luke Butterworth and Ben Hilfenhaus.
“The performance in the second half of last season wasn’t good but we thought Dan was the right man to develop the next generation of Tasmanian players and move a young team forward into the future,” he said. “But one of his KPI’s with his reappointment was to see an improvement in our young players and also to improve the players we have here and get the interstate recruits and make them better. “We weren’t expecting to win the Shield or the Matador Cup but we wanted to see improvement and an upward curve so we could look forward to the future but we got to the stage in recent times when we didn’t think the team was improving to the extent we hoped it might.”