WATCH: Savident takes on national coach role
LEE SAVIDENT has become Guernsey’s national coach.
Having been brought in to assist the management team earlier this year with Andy Cornford unable to travel to the island because of the pandemic and Olly Tapp moving onto pastures new, Guernsey’s first professional cricketer now finds himself in an elevated position and it is one which he is relishing.
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‘I’m happy to be back involved, it’s always something I kind of wanted to do when I stopped playing a couple of seasons ago,’ Savident said.
‘The opportunity didn’t really come around, now it has obviously with weird circumstances where we can’t see Pastie [Cornford] at the moment, we need that on-island presence so that’s now fallen with me and it’s great.
‘I’ve got Lee Forshaw helping me out, who’s doing a great job, and we’ve also got a couple of coaches who are in the training group so that always helps with training because they can manage themselves, which is good.
‘But I’m just looking forward to it and we’ll see where it takes us going forward.’
What representative fixtures Guernsey will have in the short to mid term is still unclear due to the travel restrictions, although it is hoped that some games against Jersey will still be possible this season.
‘We’ve got to train as if there will be a game,’ said Savident.
‘Fingers crossed between the two boards they can come up with a scenario where we can get some cricket in which is still safe and isn’t causing any risk to the local community.
‘If we do get games, basically I want the guys to be competitive and if we lose, we lose because we have lost to a better team not because we are making stupid mistakes and we’ve gifted the victory to any opposition – that’s not just if we manage to play Jersey, that’s regardless of any games we have to be competitive.’
Guernsey Cricket Board chief executive Mark Latter added that Savident had already had a positive influence on the national squad this summer.
‘At the moment we were really lucky to have Lee on island, therefore no travel issues, and with his wealth of experience, understanding about Guernsey cricket, Channel Islands cricket and international cricket so we’ve been able to pick his brain and the players have been able to use his experience and it’s working brilliantly.’
