’’ – The 2010 European Championships, Jersey, 13th – 19th July

Returning home from what was probably one of the most challenging weeks of my short National Coach career, I have now had time to reflect on some of the events that have happened over the past few days in Jersey.

The Danish National Team left last Sunday with great optimism, and indeed expectation, into our first tournament since February 2009. The new look side boasted both experience and youthful ‘exuberance’ and this was reflected in the mood of the team as we left on the long journey to Jersey. However, one win in five outings and fifth place overall in the tournament quickly brought us back to earth again.
The European Championships has and is simply a part of the bigger picture for the future of Danish Cricket. The tournament in Jersey has always been a ‘Performance Indicator’ on the long road that is the ‘National Elite Development Plan’. The five year plan has been implemented by the DCF to act as the transition phase of the game in Denmark, and on a World and European performance basis.

The team itself has changed significantly since South Africa, indeed only seven members of that squad actually travelled to Jersey. New players have been brought into the squad, and will continue to do so in the quest of finding the ‘right blend’ of youth and experience over the coming months. The Jersey tour’s purpose was to act as a visual platform to re-build a ‘New Team’.

The tournament itself was an interesting one; all teams with the exception of Denmark seem to be made up of both home grown and imported players from around the world. It appears that residency regulations in Europe in general are a lot less stringent than in Denmark! On the field we were up against our old enemy, ‘the opportunity to play on grass!’ Indeed many of our players found it very difficult to adjust from playing on matting to turf in the short space of time that we had prior to the tournament, and by the time that we had adjusted, the matches we played had slipped out of our grasp and we were constantly playing ‘catch up cricket’.

The players themselves found the week very hard physically, mentally, technically and tactically. The technical skills of adapting to grass pitch cricket was noticeable in all aspects of the game, batting, bowling and indeed fielding. Partnerships in our batting were key to the team performing to its optimum, as indeed was outstanding individual performances; we had both of these, but not consistently enough. Bowling required discipline, concentration, and the good old adage ‘Line and length’; again we had this in different phases of the games, but not enough to close out and win matches. Fielding also proved to be difficult; fast, short cut outfields, fused with a lack of understanding to fielding in these conditions combined to make life very hard for the new look Danish team. A lot of hard lessons were learnt over the week, and we have taken them on board. We are slowly moving towards the finished product, and there will be changes in all departments. I know we have the young players in our ranks that can stand up and make the positions available to them their own, and this, in combination with our more established senior players will form the backbone of the future ‘successful’ Danish National Team.

These components are not enough to further develop our future of the National Team. WE ourselves, Danish Cricket, must look at to make our domestic cricket stronger. Other countries around the world have stronger competitions than us; this is generally based upon numbers of players and professionals. Danish cricket does not operate in this way, we must find a way to continually nurture an expanding game, but at the same time develop the talent that we have in the most competitive environment possible. It is my belief, that it is time for us to resurrect the Regional tournament of old where all our representative players compete in different game formats under the competition rules they are expected to play under in tournaments abroad. I believe that this is the only way forward for us. Having now seen the competition at first hand I can see that the lesser nations are developing very quickly, and we must move quickly to give our very talented players every opportunity to be able to compete at the very highest levels of ICC world Cricket Leagues, Europe and World.