Lives in Cricket No 12 - Ric Charlesworth

state from a successful stint with Sri Lanka – was blocking an opportunity he would have taken in preference to staying on in Christchurch. Even though ‘living in New Zealand wasn’t much different from Australia’, Perth was always his preferred place of residence. But by August 2007, when he was already exploring other coaching possibilities, none of them were in Perth, where Moody was firmly ensconced as coach at the WACA. When Ric duly left New Zealand at the end of his two-year contract in early October 2007, it had been ‘a difficult decision, because I have greatly enjoyed living in New Zealand and working with NZC. I am optimistic that NZC has the people and structure in place in high performance to challenge the world’s best during the next decade.’ Among significant achievements, he stressed in 2009, had been the way both the New Zealand women and men’s under-19 teams had been World Cup finalists. But, when he left, he made it clear there was still much to be done, in relation to batting and especially in attitudes to training and practice, which he clearly felt fell short of the standards he had insisted on from Australia’s women hockey players. New Zealand had failed to reach 200 in any of their four Test innings against South Africa. ‘A couple of Test matches against a very good team in difficult circumstances had highlighted’ the problems. ‘But we in New Zealand Cricket have been aware for a long time, we don’t have quality, sustainable batting and that’s the area where we are most deficient.’ Struggling to find a quality opening pair since the retirement of Mark Richardson, they had not had a century opening stand since June 2004. Richardson was a player who had ‘wrung every ounce of talent’ from himself, but few others could say the same. We have to be very ambitious. We want to be world class, not just playing for New Zealand. Because there’s not a competitive environment around the team, then there isn’t quite enough hunger and the work ethic that there needs to be. The question has to be asked of some of those players – do we prepare well enough? Although there was a need for ‘a critical mass of outstanding players, not just one or two.’ New Zealand’s small population (3.8 million) and pool of cricketers did not make it impossible to compete at a high level. 80 2002-2009