Former Australia cricketer Julia Price will join Brisbane Heat as an assistant coach of the franchise for the upcoming men’s Big Bash League. With this, she becomes the first female coach in the competition. Price has earlier worked as a coach of the Hobart Hurricanes in the Women’s Big Bash League and will work under Darren Lehmann.

“I’m pretty excited about [the role], I have to admit,” Julia Price said while on commentary during the WBBL final on Sunday. “I’m really looking forward to the opportunity to be around the guys and seeing how they do it differently to what the girls do.”

“Having been in the Hurricanes set up for the WBBL, it will be interesting to see how the BBL does it. I had a bit to do with the Hurricanes boys but this will be a completely different level now … I can learn off both the players and the coaching staff,” she added.

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Lehmann too praised the in coming assistant coach. “We’d been chatting about whether there were some professional development opportunities for her through her USA role and we just went from there,” he said. “She has an excellent cricket brain and plenty of experience as a head coach, so I can see her fitting quite neatly into our set-up.”

“We knew we had Ryan Harris with us for the start of the BBL before he goes to the U19 World Cup, but there was still a position available for us to fill on the coaching staff and we thought this was a great chance to innovate and think outside the box. I’m pleased the Heat have been able to go in a direction that we haven’t seen yet in the BBL in having a woman on the coaching staff, but I don’t believe it will be the last time it happens either,” further added.