We caught up with Head Coach Grant Bradburn, as he talks us through his first month in charge, the feeling in camp, and those St Davids's Day announcements!
Hi Grant, thanks for joining us! How has your first month as head coach been? Have you settled into the role?
I am absolutely loving it here in Cardiff with Glamorgan, and oh, it’s been extremely cold in the last month and a little bit wet, but it’s an incredibly warm welcome from everyone at the club. So, I’m really enjoying it and can’t wait to get stuck into the season soon.
Can you share any insights into the new signings for the upcoming season?
Well, yeah, Mir Hamza has been signed last Friday, which was an exciting day with three announcements. We’ve announced the captains, we have Mason Crane coming from Hampshire, which is really a nice addition, and Mir Hamza, I think, is a great addition for us as an overseas player. Mir comes with experience of over 400 wickets in first-class cricket, and having worked with him in Pakistan previously.
I was there on his debut when he skittled David Warner at Abu Dhabi, and watched Mir and have a lot of admiration for Mir as a character on and off the park. He’s gonna add a lot to our team, really looking forward to welcoming Mir to Cardiff.
What are your thoughts on the progress of training so far? Any areas of focus or improvement?
I couldn’t be happier with the way that things are going indoors, how the energy from our team, just getting to know the squad. Obviously, we’ve got a really nice mix of experienced players, and we’ve got a wonderful crop of young and future stars coming through who are skillful and talented.
So, it’s really exciting, we’ve got a nice mix, obviously adding Mir and Mason into the mix as well as it adds to the balance to our squad and so far, we’ve really focused on just bringing some clarity to how we’re gonna go about winning games of cricket and also just giving the respect to our players and giving them absolute clarity of the individual roles within that.
So, yeah, we’ve put in a lot of hard work over the last month, actually it sort of feels like I’ve been here for two or three, but I’ve also gotta remember that we’re indoors at the moment so, you know, I’ve got to temper more excitement a little bit for the skills that I’m seeing and of course, the transition to outside is gonna be an incredibly an important part of this final phase as we lead into Game one, but I couldn’t be happier so far.
The energy is great, the skills on show are fantastic, yes, we’ve added a few different things into training which the players are really responding to well, so look, I’m loving the attitudes and I can’t wait to get outside like everyone else and hopefully that happens soon.
Can you highlight any specific goals or objectives you've set for the team during your first month as Head Coach?
We want to put ourselves into contention for all three formats this season, so we are desperate to find our process for winning games of cricket, and we’ve spoken as a group a lot and we have trained specifically to do that and we’ve now got some very, very clear plans in place which the players are buying into and responding too well, so even though it’s only been four weeks on the ground, we’ve got some clarity about utilizing our skill sets to the best so that we can win games of cricket and ultimately we wanna create a winning environment on the field and an awesome culture of it and so far, I’m really pleased there seems to be great evidence of both.