Former Australian pacer Jason Gillespie has wished to play the national selector role in future. He feels that it would be a challenging role and he is ready for it.
After completing his playing career, Gillespie is currently focusing to the coaching roles. He has already coached several teams – as bowling coach in Kings XI Punjab (2011), successful coaching stint in Yorkshire (2011 to 2016), head coach of Adelaide Strikers (2015), interim head coach of Papua New Guinea national team (2017) etc. At present, Gillespie is playing the head coach role in another English County cricket team Sussex.
Earlier, Gillespie was a strong favourite to become the head coach of Australian cricket team after Darren Lehman’s resign from that role in this April. However, later, Justin Langer has been appointed for that role from this May.
Now, the former Australian pacer has claimed that he will love to take the challenges of the national selectors in the future.
On Friday, Gillespie told cricket.com.au, “I’d certainly love to be involved in selection at some point in the future. It’s certainly a challenging role and it’s not to be underestimated how challenging it is. You only have to look at recent times, with the 50-over domestic one-day competition in Australia played very early in the season. And then players are being selected almost on the back of Big Bash form, because it’s hard for the selectors to judge how a player is going in 50-over cricket when there hasn’t been 50-over cricket played for four or five months. That’s just one of many challenges that selectors have to go through.”
During his playing days, Gillespie was a top quality pacer but several fitness issues hit his career hugely. Making his international cricket debut in 1996, Gillespie played 71 Tests, 97 ODIs and only T20I where he picked up a total of 402 wickets (259 wickets in Tests, 142 wickets in ODIs and only wicket in T20I). He was also a very handy lower-order batsman and has the record of playing the highest knock in a Test innings as a night-watchman (201*).
Trevor Hohns, Greg Chappell and the national head coach Justin Langer are in the present CA selection panel.
