New Medal honours academy pioneer who reshaped cricket

Andrew Sincock was aged 15 and about to start Year 11 at King's College (now Pembroke School) when he first opened the bowling for Kensington in Adelaide grade cricket, where his maiden wickets were future Test opener Ashley Woodcock and Australia captain-in-waiting Ian Chappell.

It was 1966, and an era when pre-game warm-ups involved a few blokes standing in a semi-circle accepting gentle catches struck off the full face of a bat, and the post-match ice bath was solely for storing long-neck bottles of bitter beer that were mandatory for rehydration.

Twenty five years later, Sincock took over as head coach at the Australian Institute of Sport Cricket Academy tutoring a cohort that included Justin Langer, Damien Martyn, Greg Blewett and Shane Warne where he pioneered advances in training and technology that continue to shape cricket today.

Sincock's extraordinary contribution to the game in South Australia – Sheffield Shield winner in 1981-82, state men's team coach, SA Cricket Association vice-president and third-highest wicket-taker in Adelaide Premier Cricket (762) – has led to a new award being struck in his name.

With Adelaide Premier Cricket restructured into two tiers from this summer, the division two equivalent of first-grade's Bradman Medal is the Sincock Medal which will be presented by the man himself at next Wednesday’s end-of-season awards night.

But the unfailingly bright 72-year-old, who has waged a few health battles of late, believes his most enduring contribution to the sport that has quite literally been his life came from being at the forefront of the fundamental shift those academy years ushered in.

"In the time I played most of my cricket, you were simply a cricketer," Sincock told cricket.com.au recently from his 'little piece of paradise' at American River on SA's Kangaroo Island.

"It wasn't until I became involved at the academy in the late 80s and early 90s that I came to understand you were actually an athlete who played cricket.

'It's an entirely different conversation, and subsequently we trained those academy scholarship holders as athletes.

"We called them athletes; we never referred to them as cricketers."

It might sound like a trite demarcation to the game's modern followers unfamiliar with how it looked before limited-overs became the dominant format, but the innovations introduced at the Adelaide-based academy radically revamped the sport not only in Australia but, eventually, across the world.

Not that the change came easily.

Sincock, who is at pains to point out the new methods were initially implemented by his academy coaching predecessors Jack Potter and Peter Spence, remembers the program's reputation spreading quickly to England where plans for a local version were opposed by the counties.

Former Somerset captain and leading cricket journalist Peter Roebuck spent some time at the Adelaide academy during Sincock's tenure to chronicle the new phenomenon, but confided to the then head coach prior to departure "it's fascinating what you do, but it's not going to catch on".

It proved a rare misreading by Roebuck, with academies and high-performance centres slowly springing up in all corners of the cricket world.

Potter and Spence had designed a program based on the philosophies of Canadian physical education guru Tudor Bompa, whose books on the objectives, principles and components of training were widely used to prepare international athletes in the latter decades of the 20th Century.

And the academy's athletic training went much further than a heightened focus on fitness.

The scholarship holders were taught correct swimming techniques to maximise the body co-ordination, muscle strengthening and aerobic benefits of non-weight bearing exercise.

The coaching staff took regular core body temperature readings during training sessions, and measured fluid loss in every athlete to design individual hydration plans that would become invaluable when playing in extreme conditions.

A professional sprint coach was brought in to refine running styles as part of the tri-weekly athletics program the scholarship holders embraced through gritted teeth.

"I'd get to the Adelaide parklands early in the morning and we would set up all these running drills, which led the boys to decide that AIS stood for 'A… holes in Sandshoes'," Sincock recalled.

And then-Test batter Dean Jones was enlisted to teach his method of running between wickets, so those who aspired to follow in his footsteps could use his novel way of 'touching in' from well short of the crease to reduce the distance covered when shuttling up and down the pitch.

But as Sincock learned when he first assumed the coaching job from Potter and Spence in late 1990, none of those athletic endeavours came at the expense of cricket craft.

While the additional work being undertaken in the nets spoke for itself, it was in other specialist skills session that the cricket academy kids were most visibly laying the foundation for generations that followed.

"Jack (Potter) said to me when I took over 'when you have this team playing in a match, watch them, they are unbelievable – they will field like you've never seen'," Sincock said.

"That was true because we used to go into a room at Adelaide University gym that had padding on the floor and walls, and we'd stand there and whack balls at them and they had to try and stop each one.

"They had to dive, catch then stand up straight away, then dive, catch stand up – over and over.

"Then we'd use a room at the gym with a polished wooden floor and set up bowling machines that bounced the ball through at three different heights – thigh high, chest high and head high.

"Those bowling machine balls were plastic, but hurt when they hit you.

"Of course, helmets were in use by then, but these guys were 18 or 19 years old and had to get used to what was happening.

"After a while, those guys like Blewy (Blewett) and Justin (Langer) just ate it up."

There were other never-before-seen elements added to fielding practice that are now viewed as de rigueur.

In Sincock's era, fielders would politely jog alongside a ball as it travelled across the outfield until able to bend down and arrest its progress, at which point they would turn, skip a step or two and hurl it high to the wicketkeeper.

But the academy scholars were drilled to field in groups, whereby the player in pursuit of a ball would be shadowed by a teammate prepared to receive a back-flick before powering it back to the stumps.

Or, if returning from longer distances, they were instructed to throw it on the bounce to another waiting teammate within the inner fielding circle in a bid to cut out every possible run available to the batting team.

Then there was the introduction of the now-renowned 'sliding save'.

"On that same shiny floor in the gym, we would get wheat bags and place them halfway along, roll a ball past the wheat bag and the guys had to run after it, drop down and tuck their knee on to the wheat bag, slide, get back up and return the ball," Sincock said.

"That hadn't been seen before."

Sincock had progressed to coaching via an unconventional path.

Trained as a schoolteacher, he also completed an economics degree and was appointed South Australia's bowling coach for 1989-90 by dint of his experience as a former first-class player, captain of three Adelaide grade teams who had also coached two of those (Adelaide and West Torrens).

It was after his initial stint under then SA coach Les Stillman that Sincock was approached by Potter and Spence to become involved at the academy and when they - unbeknownst to one another – both stood down around the same time, he took charge of the class of 1990.

He appointed fellow former SA teammate Barry Causby as batting coach, even though the duo held no international experience beyond Sincock's role as vice-captain of an Australia schoolboys team that toured the Caribbean in 1969-70, which included future Test players Gary Gilmour, Ian Davis, Gary Cosier and Trevor Chappell.

But in addition to more than 70 first-class appearances between them from 1973-83, the pair had come through an Adelaide grade scene that attracted players the calibre of West Indies legends Garfield Sobers, Joel Garner and Gordon Greenidge, South Africa batting maestro Barry Richards and former England opener Nick Knight.

Given the $300,000 per annum tipped into the academy by the Australian Sports Commission at the time, its focus on athletic excellence on top of cricket tutelage was understandable.

But the then Australian Cricket Board (now Cricket Australia) saw a broader remit whereby the finishing school might also provide a more seamless pathway into senior cricket for outstanding junior talents.

As part of that plan, national men's team coach Bob Simpson and then selection chair Jim Higgs turned up to a day of training at Adelaide Oval No. 2 to get to know a few of the lads already on the radar for higher honours.

Sincock was privy to a conversation the pair conducted with Warne, who had struggled to make an impact for St Kilda in Melbourne grade cricket but whose potential had warranted selection in an Australian Young Cricketers tour to the West Indies alongside Martyn, Michael Bevan and Damien Fleming.

As fellow practitioners of the leg-spin craft, Simpson and Higgs were running through possible match scenarios and how they might approach them.

"Simmo (Simpson) said if he was bowling over the wicket, he wanted to land on the line of off stump because he was a bouncy, high looping leg-spinner, then turn the ball away to try and get blokes caught at slip, stumped, or maybe even caught at point or cover," Sincock recalled of that 1990 chat.

"And Jimmy (Higgs) said 'I used to spin it a lot, so my landing spot would be quite different to Simmo's - I'd land middle-and-leg and turn across them, then try to get that false shot to bring a catch and then adjust the line slightly towards off for the wrong-un because that also spun a lot'.

"Then, and I'll never forget this, Shane - who had just turned 21 - said 'bullshit you blokes, I reckon if you go around the wicket in those circumstances and land it in the footmarks, you'll be able to bowl him behind his legs'.

"The coach and the chairman both looked a little stunned, and Simmo came to me a bit later and said 'err Evil (Sincock's nickname), I don't know what we've got here'.

"A year later, Shane changed his world."

While the likes of Martyn, Blewett and Langer – who Sincock chose to captain the 1990 academy team that played a tour game against Mike Atherton's England on the grounds of Adelaide's St Peter's College in November 1990 – were stand-outs, he holds a special fondness for Warne.

"He was a fantastic lad, I've been lucky to meet a few people who change the world they lived in, and if they're able to do that, the best we can do is just get out of their way," Sincock said of the late leg-spinner.

"Look to the sky; look way above the horizon because these people are special."

Sincock's academy tenure lasted just one year before he was replaced by Rod Marsh, and although he was interviewed for the job as the ex-Test keeper's deputy that role went to Richard Done, a former fast bowler for New South Wales whose sports science background fitted with the AIS aims.

"They wanted someone with a bigger name, so that's when Rod became involved and he did an outstanding job with it and took it to another level," Sincock said.

Had he remained at the academy longer, it's likely he would have pursued his personal ambition to have women's players admitted as scholarship holders which would have proved even more visionary than the skills sessions he oversaw with future Test stars.

Instead, his journey took him back to Adelaide grade cricket, then coach of SA's under-19s in 1996-97 and in charge of the men's team a year later, where he again lasted a solitary season where the Redbacks finished bottom and he was replaced by Greg Chappell.

But his contribution to cricket continued, as a SACA board member working alongside another Adelaide stalwart and former SACA coaching and development manager Grant Wyman, he advocated for the grassroots game as well as greater opportunities for women, Indigenous and all-abilities players.

Sincock also became a driving force in getting Cricket Australia to provide direct financial support for Premier Cricket across the country, and in 2017 received an Order of Australia award for services to the game.

He can also lay claim to being among the few surviving South Australians who have been part of a Sheffield Shield-winning outfit given they've lifted the trophy just once in the past 42 years, and has a first-class hat-trick to his name in which India legend Sunil Gavaskar was the final victim.

That came for SA in a tour game at Adelaide Oval in the first summer of World Series Cricket in 1977, when Sincock's career-high 7-40 in India's first innings included the final two wickets of card-carrying batting bunnies Bishan Bedi and Bhagwat Chandrasekhar from successive deliveries.

For reasons known only to then skipper Woodcock, he wasn't thrown the ball until almost an hour into India's second innings and was oblivious to his milestone moment when he rattled Gavaskar's stumps with his first delivery, only realising it was a hat-trick when an announcement came over the public address system.

"If I'd known I was on a hat-trick, it probably would have been a half-tracker," Sincock mused.

"(Officiating umpire) Max O'Connell used to say it was an off-cutter, but I reckon it was a leg-cutter and Gavaskar said to Rodney Hogg as he walked off 'that ball will get me out every time I bat'.

"So I'm pleased to keep that in my little diary of famous sayings."

As a dual Bradman Medal winner, Sincock remembers when the prize was handed out at an end-of-year umpires' dinner to which the top three vote-getters would be invited (at their own expense), with two of them duly going home empty-handed.

As a proponent for a more formal recognition for clubs at the close of a Premier Cricket season, he is thrilled he and wife Yvonne have been invited to attend the inaugural presentation of the Sincock Medal along with other members of his family.

That includes the honour of bestowing the award upon the winner each year, as he puts it, "until I fall off the perch".

"It really was a bit of a sit-down moment," Sincock said of his reaction when told of plans for the newly minted gong.

"I don't think a lot of things in my life have sat me down on my bum, unless it was a very short and very quick bouncer like the one Jeff Thomson bowled at me that I stupidly tried to hook … and got four runs over gully, which only made him angrier.

"I wasn't a great cricketer really.

"I ended up being a fine player at Premier Cricket level, and am still the third-highest wicket-taker in that competition and I can't see anybody overtaking that mark.

"But cricket's a bit of a weirdo game, and there's people who think those of us who did what we did back in the bygone eras that we inhabited, that we were just dumb.

"They don't realise that things like the cricket academy were absolutely revolutionary."