New Hobart Hurricanes head of strategy Ricky Ponting has revealed some big changes for the franchise ahead of their BBL|12 campaign kicking off against the Melbourne Stars on Friday evening.
A big change will see Tim David will move up the order after some new additions to the side. The Hurricanes have picked up Shadab Khan, Asif Ali and Jimmy Neesham, adding to their already star-studded outfit. These additions mean David can be utilised up the order.
“One thing that I'm really keen to do this year with Tim David is I want him to bat longer, bat more time,” Ponting said cricket.com.au.
“He's one of those guys who can make really big scores for you if he gets enough time to do it.”
“One thing you don't ever want to do as a coach is have your better players not facing enough balls in the game.”
“I talked about loading up the back half (with power-hitters), that might mean we can actually bat Tim higher in the order and know that we've still got power after him.”
“Whereas in the past, if we batted him up, there was no power left, so it gives is great flexibility of what to do with our batting order.”
The 26-year-old was Singaporean-born but raised in Australia. He played internationally for Singapore until the World Cup where he was selected for Australia.
As for BBL heavyweight D'Arcy Short, he too has seen his role change as he now will permanently be at the top of the order. Last season Short experienced a lot of constant changes and was shuffled around the order in every position from one to five.
Short started last season at the top before eventually swapping with Ben McDermott who went on to top the runs tally with 577 runs. Short made 444 runs and was the sixth highest in the league. But Ponting has indicated Short will now open.
“We're going to open the batting with D'Arcy this year, he's been up and down the order the last couple of seasons,” Ponting said.
“I want to try and reinvigorate him into being one of the best openers in Australia and I think we can do it.”
"I watched him in a couple of games last year and there's certainly some technical aspects that he needed to work on and straighten out.”
"And he's working on those things every day, so that's a really good sign.”
"We've got a brand-new fresh coaching group; Jeff (Vaughan), James (Hopes) and Darren (Berry) who will put their arms around him and give him a cuddle and make him feel really wanted and welcome.”
"And if we can get him confident again and playing the way that we all know we can play, then I think he can be one of the leading run-scorers again.
"If we can get that sort of return out of him with McDermott and (Matthew) Wade and then some of the power we've got in the middle-order, it's a pretty formidable batting line-up that we've got.”
The Hobart Hurricanes take on the Melbourne Stars on December 16 at 5:05pm AEDT. The Stars have played once already, losing to the Sydney Thunder. This will be the Hurricanes' first game of the campaign.
