Old world, new school: The arrival of coach White

A 20-year-old Cameron White wanders out to the middle of Bowral's picturesque Bradman Oval for the first coin toss of his professional career. He is greeted beside the pitch by umpires Steve Davis and Darrell Hair as players from both sides – no fewer than 12 current or future internationals among them – continue their warm-ups. White is nervous, but neither his face nor his demeanour betrays him. It is a trait that will stay with him for the next two decades.

"Whether it was taking on that captaincy as a kid, playing for Australia, or playing in high-pressure situations in Shield finals, he was always really level," says long-time teammate Dan Christian. "Internally he might've been all over the place – who knows? – but he never seemed overawed in any situation."

White's eyes land on the man standing directly across from him. Decked out in the sky blue of his native state, he also wears the most recognisable stony-faced glare in cricket. It's Steve Waugh.

"Thank God I was young and naïve back then," White laughs today. "Fortunately he didn't bother wasting too much energy on me. Probably just thought I was easy pickings."

New South Wales cruise to a comfortable seven-wicket win in the afternoon and White's arrival as Victoria's youngest-ever captain passes by without incident. Five days later, he registers his first win in charge, off the back of centuries to senior batters Brad Hodge and Matthew Elliott in a run chase against Queensland.

Matters are complicated that same week when the Vics' Sheffield Shield captain Darren Berry breaks a finger. White had been the left-field leadership choice in the one-day side based off not much more than a hunch from head coach, David Hookes. The move raised eyebrows both within and beyond Cricket Victoria.

Now Hookes and his assistant, Greg Shipperd, are pondering a vital question: Do we double down on the kid?

Depending on how you look at it, the timing is as good or as bad as it is ever going to be. For the first time in Shield history, 12 seasons have come and gone without Victoria winning the competition. Sure, White is raw. But he is also Australia's U19 World Cup winning captain, he is tactically razor sharp, and he has energy and ideas aplenty. Crucially, with 30 state games to his name and having soaked up some hard lessons in his formative seasons, he feels ready to put his feet to the fire.

"The culture of Cricket Victoria at the time was the grounding for the way I went on to play and lead the team for the next 10 or 15 years," White says.

"People like Darren Berry and 'Hodgey', Matty Elliott and Matthew Inness and plenty of other really strong characters, and the environment I walked into as a teenager and spent lots of time, that hardened me pretty quickly."

Hookes and Shipperd decide to roll the dice. Much to the chagrin of some.

"There were blokes who had played 100 Shield games, who had played Test cricket, and they're giving it to this kid?" recalls David Hussey, who was in that Victoria side. "It was sort of like, 'Hang on…'

"Back in those days, there was a hierarchy. You had to earn your stripes, and if you're a young kid coming into the dressing room, you sit in the corner and you don't say a word, and you let the senior people educate you."

Yet the old ways haven't been working for Victoria. They head into their Shield opener against Queensland – the back-to-back-to-back champions – having not won a first-class match at the Gabba in 20 years.

Since White was four months old.

On day one, the young skipper takes 4-27 and claims two catches and a run-out as Queensland are bowled out for 277. The contest then see-saws through to the final day, when Victoria are chasing 160 to win. From 0-50 they collapse to 4-54, and then at 5-93 and the Bulls sensing a quick kill, White joins Andrew McDonald at the crease. Through the 90 minutes that follow, he is subjected to perhaps the fiercest acid test in domestic cricket.

"Back then, in the early 2000s, the umpires didn't get involved too much, and there was a fair bit happening," White says. "You needed to be able to handle that, mentally and physically."

Handle it he does. White faces 71 balls for his unbeaten 38 as he and McDonald share a match-winning stand. He walks away with the player-of-the-match award and the sort of grudging admiration that will typify his existence as an elite domestic cricketer for the next 16 years.

By summer's end, with Berry having returned as Shield captain and in the aftermath of the tragic death of Hookes, Victoria are savouring a long-awaited title. And as the veteran gloveman announces his retirement and thoughts turn to the 2004-05 season, there is a sudden clarity around who will be at the helm for a bold new era, in which Victoria will make 15 finals and win eight trophies in as many seasons.

"Once we actually saw Cam operate – his preparation, the fields he set, the tactics he employed – it became clear that it was another one of Hookesy's masterstrokes," says Hussey.

"We realised very, very quickly that he was a captain of the future."

* * *

Less than a month out from turning 40, Cameron White is on the phone to his eldest daughter in Melbourne, all the way from Raleigh, North Carolina. He has successfully negotiated the 15-hour time difference to catch her on her eighth birthday, a milestone this sometimes-stay-at-home dad is disappointed to have missed.

"I miss them both a lot," he says of his two daughters. "Especially at this age, eight and five."

It is surprising to hear someone with White's hard-nosed reputation talking about his daughters, about school and birthdays and his desire to be around them. But time changes people, even as their principles remain the same.

It is all but 20 years since White was thrust into that captaincy role with Victoria, just a couple of months after his 20th birthday and amid a Wild West era of Australian domestic cricket. Much of his character was forged in that fire, a world in which at least a couple of his former teammates insist the worst sledging they received came from within their own closeknit squad.

To survive as captain, White had to lead without fear or favour. He had the strong backing of Hookes, and then Shipperd, who became head coach.

A man of few words by nature, the young skipper wasted no time dealing in pleasantries, and as he grew into the leadership, his modus operandi could be summed up by the phrase 'brutal truths'. People pleasing was never an option.

"Never," he says. "I dealt in facts and honesty."

Confirms Hussey: "He's a straight shooter, so you knew exactly where you stood. Cam would openly tell bowlers after two overs, 'You didn't hit your straps, so you're having a spell'.

"People do take offence to being told exactly the truth, but that's part of being captain. And that's how you're revered, I guess, by being a little bit ruthless and telling people exactly how it is."

With time, as he became a widely known public figure in line with his Australia representation, White retreated more into himself and those close to him. The spotlight didn't sit comfortably. In domestic cricket, a detachment suited him; he had never fancied the idea of buddying up to his rivals anyway. Where others found respite in the standard post-match drinking sessions between teams, he tended to leave early, or avoid them altogether.

"One of his big mantras was, 'Don't give out all the information'," says Hussey. "Still be civil, and still communicate with the opposition, but remember what we stand for as Victorian players."

Adds Christian: "The way he was taught his cricket was that you hate the opposition, and you don't give them an inch. Even if the game's dead, you're still going to nail them.

"Whenever I was playing against him, we would always have dinner or a drink, but that's because we were already mates (from Australia U19s). He wouldn't go out of his way to make new ones."

As a consequence – intended or otherwise – a mystique built up around him. White seemed unknowable. But there were other adjectives used, too.

"He had this calm sort of aura about him," continues Christian, who played against him from 2008-13 before joining Victoria, and later winning a Big Bash title alongside him at Melbourne Renegades. "Because he didn't show too much emotion, if you didn't know him, he sometimes came across as being quite dismissive, or arrogant.

"But then, knowing him, there was never anything in it. That was just him being focused on whatever the job at hand was."

Rob Quiney, who played a decade alongside White at Victoria and remembers his captain being particularly welcoming upon his entry into the squad, insists it was more strategic.

"My early doors, he was more respected than liked," Quiney says. "I daresay there were a lot of players who didn't know what kind of bloke 'Whitey' was, and I reckon that was the way he liked it."

"One hundred per cent," confirms White. "I wanted to make sure that (opponents) thought we didn't like them, and if people can be intimidated, sometimes you can have an advantage – definitely with some teams – before you even walk onto the ground."

The testimonials pile up. Queenslander James Hopes, another to have played Australia U19s with White, always got along well with his fellow allrounder, though he knows the same could not be said for plenty of his state teammates.

"But when he captained in those early years, he was real good," Hopes says. "And he gained respect from being so tactically astute."

Fawad Ahmed, who came into the Victoria squad in 2012-13 (White's last season in charge before Matthew Wade was installed as captain, seemingly as a result of a wider push by Cricket Australia to uncover some future national leaders following the 2011 Argus Review), is another who recalls the skipper going out of his way to help him settle both on and off the field.

"But the opposition really didn't like him," Fawad smiles. "He was very aggressive on the field. A typical old Australian. Played the hard way. Gave the opposition a hard time.

"And he was hardcore Victorian. A very typical 'Bushranger' at that time. But a very good teammate."

The recurring themes – White is well liked by those who know him well, but more respected than liked by those who do not – are perhaps two sides of the same coin. His unwillingness to varnish the truth, and his fierce loyalty, have long cut both ways. Throw into that mix a perceived aloofness, and the big early challenge of his new career path has involved the need to adapt his own traits – particularly around communication – to the culture in which he now finds himself.

"Thinking about my coaching now, a lot of it is how you talk to players – the tone you use, the language you use," he says. "You've just got to be very careful about what you do these days.

"Maybe you could get away with a bit more back then (when I was playing), or people were a bit more – what's the word that I'm looking for? Resilient, maybe. There are some things you could do 20 years ago that you can't (do now)."

* * *

A tick over 50 per cent of White's 142 internationals were played under Ricky Ponting, and there is more than a touch of the Tasmanian in the way he talks, both in terms of the messages themselves and the brisk, clipped way in which they are delivered.

White enjoyed playing under Ponting. He felt they shared similar thought processes on the game, and from his leadership he learned it was beneficial to "make players feel better than what they are".

"And whatever he said, he backed up with his actions as well," he adds. "He was never saying or asking anything of the group that he wouldn't do, so I really appreciated that style, and respected it."

Ponting, who also shares with White a close association with Shipperd, was famously reared in the old-school ways of Australian cricket, from his Cricket Academy days under Rod Marsh all the way back to his formative years at Mowbray Cricket Club in Launceston.

Perhaps not coincidentally, when White tries to locate the origin of his innate cricket sense, his mind goes to Bairnsdale in the East Gippsland region of Victoria, where he had a similar grounding in the game to that of his former skipper, who is nowadays regarded as one of cricket's sharpest minds.

"Back in the country, since I was about nine through to 15 or 16, I was always playing juniors in the morning and then men's cricket in the afternoon," he says.

"So I'd maybe put it down to just being around that (environment) when I was really young, and just being interested in listening to older blokes having those after-match conversations, when they're having a beer and they start talking shop about the game. Maybe that's where it comes from."

And like Ponting, the stories of White's tactical acumen are endless. Hussey insists his cricket brain is "second to none", and in domestic cricket, he weaponised it, as New South Wales veteran Moises Henriques remembers.

"It would've been five or six years ago," Henriques recalls, "and I was facing up to Scott Boland in a Shield match."

Standing at first slip was White, who was observing the game through the in-built magnifying glass that so often separated him from his peers.

"To 'Barrel' (Boland), I was batting on off stump, and out of my crease, because I was worried about getting out lbw," Henriques continues. "To the other bowlers, I was batting deep in my crease and on middle stump, because I wasn't really as worried.

"Cam could see that I was doing something different, and he straight away said to the slip cordon, 'Boys, he's really worried about getting lbw here, so I reckon we do this, this and this' – it was just him letting me know that he knew what I was trying to do."

Henriques had long held White in high regard, ever since he was captained by him during an Australia A series against Pakistan A in 2009.

"A lot of what he said then," he recalls, "in terms of strategically and tactically, was as good as I'd ever heard. I was like, I love the way this guy thinks about the game."

* * *

White first dipped his toes into coaching waters at Adelaide Strikers in 2019-20, the same summer he finished playing. He has been steadily wading in deeper ever since, already ticking off three Australian states with roles in various coaching capacities.

In many ways, it was a long time coming. His former teammates say it is a world he was destined to enter, and White nods along at the sentiment.

"It was always the pathway," he says. "I had it in mind from a fair while out that I wanted to stay in the game. I did my coaching course when I was in my late 20s … then I tried to play for as long as I could, but I knew I wanted to go down the coaching path … and I'd made up my mind that it was gonna be a pretty quick shift."

Until calling time on his playing days, White had been one of Henriques' most enduring domestic opponents across the three formats. As an aspiring leader, the New South Welshman had come into the professional game in 2005-06 revering the young Victoria skipper. He then spent the next decade or more watching him closely, learning from and admiring the winningest captain in Australia's domestic cricket history.

"A lot of the time, it wasn't so much the planning but the instinctual moves he made," Henriques says. "He'd say, 'OK, the wicket's doing this today, the ball is doing this, and the batter's setting up like this, so I think this is going to work'.

"He was always able to see things that would maybe take other people a lot longer, or some people would never see."

When the veteran Sixers captain saw an opportunity to potentially work with White, he seized it.

"I didn't think he would leave Melbourne, to be honest, because I know how much he values his family time," Henriques says. "But then once I saw that he was doing some work for the Strikers, I said to 'Shippy' (Shipperd, Sixers head coach), 'We need to get this guy'.

"He maybe hasn't always been other people's cup of tea – he's quite direct, and at times can be a man of very few words – but a lot of his strategy and tactics and cricket knowledge and thoughts have always really resonated with me."

Owing to their shared history, Shipperd needed no convincing. White took on the role of assistant coach in July 2022 and tellingly, in the press release that announced the appointment, the veteran coach called his new offsider a "great communicator".

Christian, who points out that White is never one for small talk ("even if you go to the pub with him," he laughs, "you don't get many words out of him"), was in the Sixers set-up last year and noticed a significant shift in his former teammate.

"Just watching him, his ability to speak to the younger guys and just try to help get the best out of the – be it with a tactical change, a technical change, mindset – that's one area he's really improved," he says.

"He'd always been very much on the money with what's happening in the game, so now as a coach, his ability to deliver that has been really impressive to watch."

Quiney sees that change as a gradual evolution across a longer period. He insists the captaincy versions of White circa 2007 versus 2017 were "chalk and cheese", and in the years since, the shift has continued into the way his old friend has become an expert man manager.

"He comes from the school of, 'Let's shoot between the eyes' to get the best out of a player," Quiney says. "We all know now that that only works with a select few; the rest, you get to know them, find out what really makes them tick, what they struggle with, and come from a different angle.

"That's where he's probably learned the most in the last two or three years."

White began implementing those learnings at the Strikers, notably via his hand in the reinvention of his former Victoria teammate Matthew Short. Technically, he pointed out to Short that he was committing too far forward at the beginning of his innings, and thus restricting his scoring options. Tactically, he helped him formulate a more deliberate method through the middle overs, which led to a greater conversion of explosive starts into big scores.

At the Sixers, he has operated in the same way, offering a word of friendly advice to a bowler at the top of the nets, or over a coffee with a young player eager to be guided by his experienced hand.

"He speaks to guys about their plans or gives them feedback individually, which I don't believe we do enough of," Henriques says. "It makes it so much more specific.

"And it's informal, too. So we don't have this big meeting in a team room. He just has a conversation, one on one, and that relaxes the player; he then doesn't feel like he's being attacked."

Like Shipperd before him, White has learned quickly that fluidity in coaching is king. He has long since bitten his tongue, and adopted an altogether different method of interacting with his players.

"If you want to really get into the absolute nuts and bolts of getting the best out of a player, that's hard to do if you don't know them, because most of it's mental, especially once the players get to this level," he says.

"So (it's about) building a relationship, trying to get to know the player as best you can and get to know not only what they do physically, but how their brain and mind operates as well."

Henriques isn't sure if it is simply a mellowing with age, but the difference between the player whisperer he sees today and the one-time Captain Cranky is stark.

"He's much more approachable than he was as a player," he says. "I'm sure there were plenty of guys who played against him who probably never even exchanged words with him.

"(Previously) I would say that everyone thought he was a really good cricket mind and a really good captain. But I'm not sure how many people thought, I love having a chat to him.

"But at the Sixers, all of our guys love him. I don't know anyone who doesn't like working with him.

"Sometimes that comes with maturity anyway, and just getting older. So I don't know if it was a conscious thing or it just happened naturally, but I've definitely noticed a huge change."

* * *

It was work that had taken White to North Carolina. In February, his position with the Sixers rolled into a job with New South Wales, where he donned the training kit of his longtime sworn enemy, and from there, he was included in the Blues' history-making alliance with Washington Freedom in the United States' Major League Cricket T20 tournament.

It makes three teams – all affiliated – in one very short window, and just as quickly he has become the third spike in a leadership trident alongside Shipperd (head coach for all three) and Henriques, who leads the two T20 sides and returned to the NSW captaincy for the final Shield match of a disastrous summer.

Henriques, who has long worked with Shipperd in the same captain-coach capacity White once did, says the new addition has filled the exact role he hoped he would.

"The way Greg operates, once a T20 game starts, he just lets me take the ship in terms of tactics and strategy," says Henriques. "He won't then suggest too many things.

"Which was why I was really keen on getting Cam, because I thought he would come with a lot of in-game adaptions or ideas, like at the 10-over (break) or even at the change of innings, and go, 'This is what it looked like, and this is what we're gonna get for the back half'.

"He's the first person I go to and say, 'I'm thinking this for overs 11 and 12' and he'll be like, 'Yep, spot on', or, 'Have you thought about this?'"

White has also provided a considered view in drilling down into specific deliveries or shot selections during match reviews – an area where Henriques believes many experienced coaches let themselves down, and one he points out is critical in a match with only 240 balls and such a fine margin for error.

"He gathers context of that ball before he comes up with advice or criticism of what happened," he adds. "He'll says, 'OK, what were you thinking here? How's the execution?' He'll take into account the skill level of the batter or of that particular shot, and then if the plan was logical, and the execution was good, it's, 'No, listen, that was great – they're the boundaries we can live with'.

"You can't just coach on results – you've got to coach on processes, too."

The tailored, considered view is one White says he observed being put into practice by current Australia head coach Andrew McDonald, whom he played with and was then coached by at Victoria. It is also one that perhaps best represents the prototypical modern-day Twenty20 coach, among whose ranks White is beginning to climb.

"There's only one thing left for him to do now, which is to actually become head coach of a team," Quiney says. "I'm hoping someone provides him with that opportunity. I was going to say, 'takes the punt on him', but with 'Whitey' I don't think it would be a punt; if you invested in him as a coach, you'd get back in spades what you need from a playing group, and an organisation could learn a lot from him at the same time.

"If he's not a head coach – because there's not that many jobs out there – I could see him playing a role like Neil Balme has done with Richmond (in the AFL), overseeing a high-performance program while also being a really good mentor and helping out a head coach with ideas.

"He's dealt with the junior pathway, he's been a captain and now an assistant coach, and his read on the play and the way the game is going is so good."

He might just be tempering expectations, but White insists he is in no hurry to take on a top job.

"There's a huge difference between being an assistant coach and running your own team, and really bearing the weight of all the decisions, and the mental effort and time that would consume," he says. "In the roles I've been in so far, my mind isn't ticking every second of the day.

"That's not to say that I don't want to be a head coach – I probably do at some stage – but I guess I'm not desperate for it, or I'm not in a super rush.

"It's also a busy time in our lives as a family, so just to be to be on the road for extended periods wouldn't work well for us. My wife is a successful lawyer, so she's quite busy as well, so I think it's just important for me to be around most of the time, instead of just a little bit."

* * *

Last weekend, White headed deep into East Gippsland country, where the air is crisp and clean and the phone reception is close to non-existent.

He was there for an annual catch-up with old mates, a fishing and camping trip that always takes him back to a different time, and a different sense of being.

As he returned home, his mind quickly returned to work, and the minutiae of the upcoming Big Bash international player draft which, he says, is "like playing Tetris, trying to work out who's available".

It is this dichotomy between old and new that will inform the kind of head coach White will likely become. Many of the lessons of the past four years have, at their heart, been about refining and repackaging much of what he already knew. Age has brought with it wisdom, just as parenthood has taught him patience. He realises the captain he was 20 years ago would lose the players of today, and if he is to survive as a coach, he needs to be malleable. Besides, a lot of the new-age philosophies make sense to him.

"The game isn't just about tactics," he says. "It's more about the way everyone thinks – people's mindsets and all that sort of thing.

"As a young captain, what I had to learn very quickly – and was not very good at – was man managing, and people skills. I made lots and lots of mistakes early on in that department.

"But in the long run, it's held me in good stead. I guess (understanding) that would be my real difference from 15 years ago … I'm thinking a lot more now before I open my mouth, as opposed to just shooting from the hip."

Of course, there remain elements of his formative years that are hard-wired. Lately, he has been eyeing the Queensland Cricket set-up with interest. He likes the way it harks back to the state's golden era, how they have brought key Bulls players back into the Brisbane Heat squad, and the "Queensland versus the rest" mentality all of that is helping to generate. It speaks to his grounding as a Victoria player, and the bitter rivalries that made him.

"They've got a lot of the old Queenslanders back involved, too," he says. "Obviously Wade Seccombe is head coach, and they've got a real closeknit group going on.

"If I was involved in shield set-up full time, I'd definitely be trying to create that kind of culture … If you're a state team now and you can somehow find a bit of that rivalry, or just keep your squad really together and get a bit of the old-school spirit back, I think you can get a bit of an advantage, just because of the way the world is these days."