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Preview: Five new imports boost case for elusive title

One of only two teams yet to win a Big Bash title, the Hobart Hurricanes are hopeful a strong recruitment drive will help arrest that record

BBL|09 result: Fifth

BBL|10 squad: Scott Boland, Johan Botha*, Tim David, Jake Doran, Nathan Ellis, James Faulkner, Peter Handscomb, Colin Ingram (SA), Will Jacks (ENG), Caleb Jewell*, Sandeep Lamichhane (NEP), Dawid Malan (ENG), Ben McDermott, Riley Meredith, David Moody, Mitch Owen, Tim Paine, Wil Parker, Keemo Paul (WI), D'Arcy Short, Matthew Wade (c), Charlie Wakim*, Nick Winter, Mac Wright

*local replacement players

Imports: Colin Ingram (SA), Will Jacks (ENG), Sandeep Lamichhane (NEP), Dawid Malan (ENG), Keemo Paul (WI)

Ins: Johan Botha, Tim David (Perth Scorchers), Peter Handscomb (Melbourne Stars), Colin Ingram, Will Jacks, Sandeep Lamichhane (Stars), Dawid Malan, Mitch Owen, Tim Paine, Wil Parker, Keemo Paul, Charlie Wakim, Nick Winter (Adelaide Strikers)

Outs: George Bailey (retired), Jarod Freeman, Simon Milenko (Brisbane Heat), David Miller, Qais Ahmad, Tom Rogers (Sydney Sixers), Clive Rose, Aaron Summers

Possible Best XI: Matthew Wade, D'Arcy Short, Dawid Malan, Ben McDermott, Peter Handscomb, Mac Wright, Keemo Paul, James Faulkner, Sandeep Lamichhane, Riley Meredith, Nathan Ellis

Possible Best XI for first game: Will Jacks, D'Arcy Short, Ben McDermott, Peter Handscomb, Colin Ingram, Mac Wright, James Faulkner, Nathan Ellis, Johan Botha, Scott Boland, Riley Meredith

The inside word with coach Adam Griffith

The off-season

We've been really happy with how we’ve gone this year with our signings. We’ve obviously had a pretty significant change to our list and we’ve brought some players in, but we’ve been really happy with the guys we’ve been able to keep as well. As well as recruiting, it’s important you keep ones that you need. A couple of areas we tried to address was our middle to lower order, to try and finish an innings really well. Losing George Bailey was a loss for us, but we’ve worked hard to make sure we had some depth there. Our spin depth was another area we wanted to focus on and with the recruits we’ve brought in, I think we’ve addressed that really well.

Imports

Dawid Malan was someone we spoke to last year, but it didn’t work out with his availability. I’ve known Dawid for a while and have done a bit of work with him at Middlesex – he’s just a quality international player. He just makes runs and he’s in good form at the moment as well. He’ll be coming off a tour of South Africa and we hope he does well over there, and he has the ability to make hundreds in Twenty20 cricket and we want players who can do that and win games for us.

Keemo Paul is a very young talented player who wasn’t really on our radar for a while there. But when I was away at the IPL, I got a chance to chat to some people over there and as we were looking to fill that allrounder spot, his name came up a few times. I did some research and spoke to him when we played against Delhi. He’s an exciting player who’s played a little bit for the West Indies now; he was their T20 Player of the Year last year, which is quite a significant award when you look at the T20 talent in their group. He’s not outright fast but he’s got a lot of good skills, his change of pace is excellent, and he wants to bowl at the death. And he hits the ball hard as well, so we can use him in different areas of our batting line-up; we can elevate him if we want a bit of momentum or hold him back to the end. He’s got a different skill set to a lot of players in the competition so we’re really excited to have him.

(Delhi coach) Ricky (Ponting) was someone I reached out to when I was there and I spoke to him on the phone a bit, and he couldn’t speak highly enough of him. Keemo didn’t get the opportunities he would have liked at Delhi, but that was due to the make-up of the team. ‘Punter’ (Ponting) was looking for a way to get him in there, but he just couldn’t. But he was really positive on him.

We spoke to Sandeep Lamichhane very early in the piece and it came off the table with his availability. But when the third overseas became available to sign and with our list, we had flexibility to bring in a couple more, so we threw a message his way to see if he was still interested. Sandeep and Keemo didn’t play at all in the IPL, so not playing cricket probably changed their minds a bit about coming to play in the Big Bash. Sandeep’s circumstances changed and he became available … (and) given he hasn’t played a lot, he’s keen to get going again so that opened the opportunity for us.

Will Jacks is an exciting cricketer and we love to get young overseas guys involved who haven’t quite burst onto the scene yet on an international front. He’s someone who’s been on our radar for a little while. With ‘Diva’ (Michael Di Venuto) back with us as an assistant, he coached him at Surrey, which is where that link began. Will just wants an opportunity to come out and play to showcase what he can do. He’s aggressive with the bat and when he whacks them, he goes really well. He also brings some off-spin to the table and he’s a very good fielder as well. As an all-round package, it was a no brainer to get him in. He’ll be with us for the whole tournament so if he’s making runs and is going really well, that makes it hard for us to leave him out when we’ve got our other overseas guys available. The important thing is we’ll have him at the start of the tournament and especially with (Mathew) Wade away, he’ll give us depth in our batting group at the start of the tournament.

Surrey batsman smashes 25-ball ton

Colin Ingram is someone we touched base with late. Circumstances change where players may think they’re going to be playing cricket, but then it shuts down so the option to play BBL looks more appealing. Colin will be with from the start of the tournament until after Christmas. We can have more than three overseas (players) with us and pick the best XI from the squad we have in front of us. We have so many options for that Christmas period so we might be able to think outside the box a little bit with our overseas players.

Player availability

Matthew Wade and Tim Paine, that’s up to CA. We expect to have them back for back end of tournament, hopefully in form and going well.

With having such depth in quality with our overseas players, we don’t have to rush Dawid Malan (when he becomes available after Christmas). If he’s just walked straight out of a hotel and hasn’t picked up a bat for two weeks, it’s probably a little bit unfair on him to expect him to walk straight out and whack them.

Keemo Paul will be available as soon as the West Indies release him from New Zealand, so whether they want him there for the whole time (or not). The beauty is he’s in New Zealand so there’s no quarantine. We should get him in mid-December so he might miss the first few games. We’re hoping he’ll be available for whole tournament, but if their Bangladesh tour (in January) goes ahead and he goes, we’ll cross that bridge when it comes.

Sandeep Lamichhane will arrive mid-December, do his quarantine and then be available for 10 games. If all goes to plan, we’ll have him in Tasmania by mid-December with a view to taking him to Brisbane after the Hobart bubble.

Watch all of Sandeep Lamichhane's BBL wickets (so far)

Colin Ingram is quarantining with Will Jacks in Perth and they’ll arrive in Tassie in the next 10 days and be available for the start of the tournament. There will probably be a little bit of crossover there where we’ll have Ingram and Malan with us at the same time, so we’ll see how that plays out.

Player to Watch

We’ve got absolutely no doubt that D’Arcy Short will be ready to go. He knows his game so well now and he’s been in Sydney with the Aussie boys. So, he’ll get as much work as anyone in the lead-up to the tournament and he played a few Shield games as well. We’ve been really happy to see he’s been bowling a lot as well, which is a real bonus for us. He really started to come on as a genuine allrounder last year and hopefully the more bowling he does, he’ll keep improving in that space as well.

Your thoughts on the new rules?

I was always told not to say anything if you can’t say anything nice about someone or something. So I’ll leave it at that. CA have pushed them through; whether that’s good or bad, they’ve pushed them through so our job is to embrace them and use them to our advantage so we can win games. We’ve been talking about them as a playing group and we’ll play around with them in our practice games.

Biggest threat

The reigning premiers always go into the following season as a strong candidate. The Sixers obviously played some really good cricket last year, they’ve got a really good squad again and they’ll get some really good players back at the back end of the tournament. If they’re playing good cricket with those guys coming back in, they’ll be tough to beat. And I think the Scorchers will be interesting. They’ve had a lot of injuries over the past couple of years and if they can get those guys back on the park, they’ll be a pretty good unit as well. But as is the case every year, you only need a couple of guys to burst out of the blocks and start playing well or a young player comes up out of the blue to have a good tournament and that team generally goes pretty well. I think everyone’s got a chance to do well and with five teams in finals, most would think they’re a chance to play finals this season.