Cricket: Hunt on for Trist's successor

By RICHARD BOOCK

JOHANNESBURG - The hunt to find a replacement for outgoing New Zealand cricket coach David Trist will officially start today.

New Zealand Cricket are poised to confirm that Trist will not seek a renewal of his contract when it expires at the end of August, and are apparently resigned to finding a new coach to take the national side through to the 2003 World Cup.

Although NZC had hoped to retain his services for another term, it seems Trist had made up his mind after the first year in the job, and could not be persuaded to reconsider.

His departure will leave the New Zealand team facing their third coach in three years, and is bound to raise more questions about his relationship with convener of selectors Sir Richard Hadlee, who was appointed only months before Trist started talking about stepping down.

The former Canterbury and Eastern Province coach followed Steve Rixon into the job after the tour of England in 1999 and his replacement seems likely to be installed before next September's tour of Pakistan.

But who that might be is still anyone's guess.

Central Districts' Dipak Patel and junior development coach Mark Greatbatch apparently head a small group of New Zealand-based contenders, while former test players John Wright and John Bracewell may be available, but could possibly cause too much of a strain on the NZC budget.

Bracewell is the Gloucestershire coach and is presumably highly paid and Wright is probably in a similar situation with India, who have just signed him up for a year.

Of the overseas coaching prospects, former Australia coach Geoff Marsh was apparently in the running for the Indian job and might be tempted at a price, while any number of qualified Australian coaches are expected to test the waters.

It will also be interesting to see if NZC's technical adviser, Ash Ross, throws his hat into the ring, because he is another who is thought to be reconsidering his options after four months on the road.

Whoever receives the nod, it will never be quite the same without Trist, whose volatile mixture of eccentricity and competitiveness has made him one of the game's most comic - albeit respected - characters, with an imagination as extravagant as his moustache.

His conspiracy theories about the South Africans include the presence of secret television footage showing Jacques Kallis run out on 79 (he went on to make 160) in the first test at Bloemfontein, while stories of his tenure with Eastern Province during the 1980s still makes grown Akrikaaners laugh out loud.

There are people over here who swear he pulled stunts such as locking the visitors' dressing-room door on the morning of the game, and even closing the park gates so they could not get in.

It apparently got to the point where, if Western Province were the opposition, they would travel down only on the morning of the game in order to lessen the frustrations of playing at Port Elizabeth.

You talk to Trist about this, though, and he turns into Manuel from Fawlty Towers: "I know nothing, I know nothing," he will say, and then deftly aim the conversation in a different direction.

His record at the helm reflects the marked difference in the quality of New Zealand's opponents over the past 15 months or so, with a historic clean-sweep of the West Indies and the ICC Knockout triumph counter-balanced by a drubbing at the hands of Australia and South Africa, and an unprecendented one-day series loss against Zimbabwe.

Under Trist, New Zealand have so far won four and lost six tests (with two drawn), while fashioning a 12-win 16-loss record in one-day internationals.