Ryan Pretty has stepped up to take on the senior coaching job at Ashfield Cricket Club.
Pretty, who has played on and off at the Gisborne and District Cricket Association club, takes over from Jason King, who wants to focus just on playing next season.
After previously taking time away from the sport to concentrate on his promising football career,
Pretty found his passion for cricket continued to burn and he returned to the pitch late last year.
He said he now had a better idea of how to manage his body to handle the pressures of both sports.
“I’ve been thinking about coaching for the last couple of years,” he said.
“The timing was right … Jas wanted to step down and I wanted to take on the challenge.
“I spoke to the old man, who’s a very smart man who is well known around the association.
“He said give it a go and it doesn’t work at least you can say you’ve tried.
“I’m mature for my age and I’ve got a lot of experience playing at a higher level elsewhere.”
The last time Pretty played a full season with Ashfield, he averaged 43 with the bat as part of their club’s C-grade premiership side in 2013-14.
He said he wanted to continue the good work King had done.
He said the team did not have many players in the middle age, so he wanted to try to bridge the gap between the older and younger ones.
“ I think I can connect well with the younger guys as I’m not much older than them,” he said.
“I’ve spoken to a few players to try to get them across.
“I’d like to add one or two players, plus myself, to be a bit more competitive next year.
“Hopefully there will be competition for places for all three sides.”
Pretty said he would like to help set up a junior program at the Sunburybased club.
He also said he had yet to decide whether would combine the coaching and captain roles.
“I’ll decide what’s best first for the club and if there are better candidates for captain than me I’m happy for them to do it,” he said.
Ashfield finished seventh in the GDCA B-grade competition last season.
But they did though taste success in the T20s, winning the Cricket Willow Region T20 division 2 grand final.
Pretty said despite missing finals they weren’t that far away.
“Some games were 5050 and could have gone either way,” he said.
“We were still in the mix to play finals up until the last couple of rounds.
“I think we’ll be more competitive this year.”
.
