England Lions cricket team

Had, had a great trip up to Canada, working with John Herdman with the Canadian women's national team.

And then towards the end of my time, um, at, at QUT, I had a, a week in with the England Lions in Dubai, um, helping design and run the training camp for, for the basically England's B team.

Um, at the same time, kept going back to New Zealand, kept getting invited back to New Zealand, I guess, nicely.

Um, and did trips designed for helping coaches and coach developers, um, implementing constraint-led approaches.

...

I did an interview rec- soon before that with Wisden, and we were talking about Freddie Flintoff being my coach in the Lions the winter before in Australia, and how I've got a bit of a strut when I bat, a bit of confidence, you know? And he, Freddie was saying, "You want that kind of confidence.

Don't lose that arrogance, you know, when you're playing." And he obviously heard that or saw that, and he, he just said words to the effect of, um, "I know what Freddie's talking about and I'm glad he likes it, 'cause it's doing my head in." And he went, like, something like the lines of, "You know, you carry on like that basically.

It's, you know, it's not gonna get you far," something like that.

Yeah.

Um, different players, but probably them.

And then the amazing thing is you kind of come into cricket now, and this is what I found, you know, coming into the England dressing room in the last six months or so, um, and the Lions the last y- 18 months, and you come, come around these guys, Joe Root for example, and play with them and train with them, and it's just awesome, you know? Like, I was watching them-

Yeah.

Um, there's a lot going on in, in, in terms of tours.

I mean, there's Lions and first team tours all winter.

Um, obviously I'd love to be on the t- the first team tours as much as I can.

You know, if I get my chance, I'll absolutely take it.

Although next year we look to be hosting Sussex County Cricket Club.

Also the England Lions, the over 60s are talking to us as well.

You know, we've got this high end T10s.

So we are moving in that direction, but we don't want to go exclusively for that market, Tom, because we want, you know, as I say, we find ourselves, we see ourselves as a gateway destination.

Yep.

Um, so he's just replaced Andrew Flintoff as the head of the England Lions team, which is basically like England A effectively, right? So they've got tours coming up for the Windies, South Africa and Sri Lanka.

Uh, and Trott of course brings a lot of experience, not only from his time, uh, with Afghanistan, but as a player, like this passed me by.

He played 52 tests for England, right? Which doesn't seem a whole heap in, you know, when you talk about some of the greats of the game who have played 100 odd tests.

Yeah.

But in 52 tests, he won the Ashes three times, which is remarkable.

Uh, and he takes, uh, charge of that England Lions team.

We talked about it at the time when, uh, England were falling over in white ball.

Coaching appeal?

Well, I have done my level three this, this summer, and I've dipped into the England Lions a couple of times with, uh, Flintoff, and I...

And it was great to be amongst him.

He was...