Jonathan Trott today reflected upon the back-room restructuring at Warwickshire and admitted: “It excites me to see the club striving to get better.”
Monday 9 January was a momentous one at Edgbaston as Jim Troughton was appointed first team coach with responsibility for all first-team matters while Ashley Giles returned to the club in an overarching strategic role as sport director.
The appointments have been made with an eye on not just challenging for trophies in the short-term but also building a foundation for long-term success.
Trott, fresh from an excellent season with the bat in 2016, is clearly enthused by the new set-up.
“It shows where the club is in terms of ambition that we won a trophy and still changed things round at the top,” he said.
“That shows that, while we have got good players, there is also a lot of ambition to go for more success.
“With getting older as I am now, in my 15th season here, it excites me to see the club striving to get better. We need to create a winning culture and Gilo and Jim are perfect for that, along with Tony Frost and Alan Richardson. The guys at the top have all played for Warwickshire and that’s perfect for creating the Warwickshire way of playing cricket which is so important.”
A Bear since 2003, Trott knows all about that ‘Warwickshire way’ – and he sees his role as a senior player as about much more than scoring runs. He will be working hard with the coaches and captain Ian Bell to help develop the younger the players around them.
Trott can wholeheartedly vouch for the value of a timely mentor. It was the input of Giles which enabled him to shed the baggage of a wretched 2007 season (396 championship runs at 19.80) and begin the route which took him to a century on his Test debut for England against Australia in August 2009.
“In 2008, Gilo’s first season as director of cricket, he took us straight back up to the championship First Division and that was a really important year for me in terms of development of my all-round game and changing the way I viewed the sport,” Trott said.
“Gilo has played a huge role in my career and hopefully he will have a huge influence on some of the younger guys coming through now.
“If you look at our squad now we have a lot of guys probably in their prime and responsibility falls on the likes of Ian and myself as captain and vice-captain to set an example. Not just on the field with performances, but by helping guys off the field so that they can improve individually and as a group and enable Warwickshire to go on winning trophies.”
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