Carlisle conquers 'timid' start to play key role in Tigers' title tilt

After biding his time for five years behind the likes of Jackson Bird and Peter Siddle, Iain Carlisle knew he had to be ready to grab his opportunity when it arrived.

A side strain at the start of this season meant he had to wait even longer following the decorated pair's departures during the off-season as Tasmania surged to the top of the Marsh Sheffield Shield standings with a unique XI consisting of just two frontline quicks and three pace-bowling allrounders.

"That meant there was automatically one less bowling spot," Carlisle told cricket.com.au after the Tigers qualified for this season's Shield decider.

"So I always knew it was going to be hard to get into the team.

"Beau (Webster) was always going to play but 'Hopey' (Brad Hope) and Mitch (Owen) found ways to contribute to help us win games – and it's hard to change a winning team."

A side strain to Owen, and season-ending injury to seamer Lawrence Neil-Smith, opened the door for Carlisle after the mid-season break for KFC BBL|13.

But after returns of 2-75 and 0-37 in his first match of the 2023-24 summer against Western Australia at Blundstone Arena, the 24-year-old right-armer knew an even harder task would be keeping his spot in the ladder-leading Tigers' XI, who have used nine of the 10 fast bowling options in their 22-player squad this season as well as uncontracted quick Kieran Elliott.

While it was only his second first-class match (after debuting in the Tigers' final Shield match of last season where they finished fifth), the years spent training alongside two of the competition's finest performers had given Carlisle the tools he needed to adapt quickly.

In the following game against Victoria, he followed his 2-18 in the Vics' first-innings 106 all out with a match-turning spell in the second, sparking a collapse of 6-36 with the wicket of Peter Handscomb for 71 late on day three, finishing with 4-68 from 21.1 overs to help the Tigers seal their place in this season's Shield final.

"Getting back-to-back games, I felt like I was able to take a lot of the personal learnings that I had from the WA game and put them into effect almost straightaway," Carlisle said.

"I didn't really have to wait too long for the next game (as he did for the 11 months between his first and second Shield matches).

"I felt like I was potentially a little bit timid in the way that I approached my bowling (against WA).

"I'm someone who runs in quite hard and is quite aggressive with the way that I bowl, and I felt like I potentially didn't experiment as much as I usually do and played it a little bit safe.

"I decided (in the) Vic game I wanted to use my bouncer a lot more, I wanted to use my crease a lot more and try and create as many chances as I could.

"So I'm very happy to be able to contribute to the team and feel like I've helped win a game for Tasmania."

Another pair of three-wicket hauls in each innings followed in a losing cause against South Australia in the final round of the season as the Tigers squandered their chance to host the decider and they'll instead head west to face the two-time reigning champions at their WACA Ground fortress beginning this Thursday.

In the three games he has played so far this season, Carlisle has been Tasmania's most prolific bowler (14 wickets), and only Gabe Bell (39 wickets at a strike rate of 38.3) has struck more frequently than Carlisle's average of once every 41.2 balls for bowlers to have played multiple Shield games for the Tigers in 2023-24.

Like his mentor Bird, who he said gave him a lot of time throughout the first four years of his career, the Canberra-born, Wollongong-raised quick moved south to Hobart to take up a rookie contract for the 2019-20 season with opportunities limited in his native NSW (where he played representative cricket alongside and against current NSW squad members Ollie Davies, Ryan Hackney, Jack Edwards, Matt Gilkes, Blake Nikitaras, Baxter Holt and Tassie teammate Neil-Smith).

After moving to Sydney aged 14, he graduated from the AW Green Shield under-16s to first grade at Premier Cricket club Campbelltown Camden under the tutelage of then head coach and Marnus Labuschagne's batting guru Neil D'Costa, taking 15 wickets at 17.13 in the U19 National Championships for ACT/NSW Country the season prior to moving to Tasmania.

In the past two years he’s worked with another renowned coach in Rob Cassell who joined Tasmania as bowling coach prior to last season.

He credits the former Victoria and SA quick with helping him understand the lengths he needed to bowl to be successful at first-class level.

"He's very level-headed," Carlisle said of his relationship with Cassell. "I was a little bit hard on myself during and after the WA game about how I thought I had bowled.

"He helped me realise that I did actually bowl quite well I just potentially didn't do as many things that make me, me.

"I'm definitely very fortunate to have been able to be around such high-quality fast bowlers (in Bird and Siddle) for my first five years on contract.

"It was obviously quite tough, certainly towards the last year or two that they were there from a personal standpoint.

"As I got older and started feeling like I was a little bit closer to being ready … I was getting a little bit frustrated with the lack of opportunities just through my own personal ambitions.

"But it's always quite hard to displace players who've had such illustrious careers and are still performing at such a high level.

"I've been very lucky to be around those guys for so long, especially through the really early years of my career."

But Carlisle's commitment to "stay ready" has seen him grasp that opportunity when it did arise and he's now one of the Tigers' key weapons as they look to upset WA on their home turf to become a Sheffield Shield winner in just his fifth first-class match.

"Throughout my time at Cricket Tas, everyone's gone through periods of playing and not playing," the former under-19 Australian quick said.

"It's a very even bowling cohort and there's obviously a lot of competitiveness there, so we do push each other to be better.

And I think there is always that thought that the bloke who's not playing is someone that could easily fill your spot and it's just a healthy competitive environment.

"But I'm just happy to be getting the opportunity now and very grateful for the experiences I had early on with those guys."

Sheffield Shield 2023-24 standings

Team	Matches played M	Wins W	Losses L	Drawn D	No results N/R	Deductions Ded.	Batting Bonus Bat	Bowling Bonus Bowl	Total points PTS
1 Western Australia Men WA	10	5	2	3	0	0	5.53	9.4	47.93
2 Tasmanian Tigers Men TAS	10	5	2	3	0	0	6.06	8.3	47.36
3 NSW Men NSW	10	4	3	3	0	0	6.31	9	42.31
4 Victoria Men VIC	10	4	4	2	0	0	4.74	8.2	38.94
5 South Australia Men SA	10	3	6	1	0	0	5.19	9.3	33.49
6 Queensland Bulls QLD	10	2	6	2	0	0	3.54	8.3	25.84

Legend

M: Matches played

W: Wins

L: Losses

D: Drawn

N/R: No results

Ded.: Deductions

Bat: Batting Bonus

Bowl: Bowling Bonus

PTS: Total points