Seconi: What you have been doing since hanging up the pads?
Adams: Oh, jeez. That was 10 years ago. I started my coaching journey before I finished playing. And then I was an assistant coach at Auckland for a few years. I managed to go across to New South Wales in 2018. I coached the Sydney Sixers and the New South Wales Blues as a bowling coach for five years. It was pretty full-on, that job. I worked with the Birmingham Phoenix women. Did a White Ferns tour. Worked for the Black Caps in a bowling coach role against Pakistan in the T20 series a couple of seasons ago. And then I worked with the Bangladesh men’s team for 14 months. Been all over the place. It’s been really cool, actually.
How did the job at Otago materialise?
I saw it advertised and I wanted to get back into the development space. That’s what I love doing.
Were you tempted to apply for the head coaching role?
No, I’m not a head coach. It’s not my skill set. I didn’t mind running an A team programme and a development programme. But I don’t have the admin skills. In terms of coaching, I like the hands-on stuff. And the other bits and pieces, the scheduling and everything, are just too much. I think my skill is in being pretty observational and seeing what’s going on and where we need to head. So I don’t like to have my time and my focus taken up by other things, which tend to get in the way.
What is your role in the team? Are you the bowling coach and perhaps also providing some mentoring for rookie head Josh Tasman-Jones?
I’m an assistant coach, so I’m across everything. We work pretty well. He’s very organised, very structured. No ego, which is quite nice. And quite rare for a head coach to have no ego. I’m not quite the opposite end of the spectrum, but I’m a bit more ... well, he’s the ice, and I’d say I’m the fire. I’m not really fire — that was probably a few years ago. I’m a lot calmer now. I’m just a bit more direct, given my experience. And Taz has been awesome at just letting me get on with it. I always chat with him about what I’m seeing and where we need to go. At the end of the day, he drives it. And he’s been bloody good at that. One thing that’s impressed me most about him is he doesn’t sit on his hands and wait for things to happen. If we agree on something that needs to be done, he goes and does it straight away.
What do you make of Otago’s bowling stocks?
There are some good young kids coming through. I like the stocks we have at the moment with J-Mac [Josh McKay] and Bakes [Matt Bacon] and Danru [Ferns] and Haze [Andrew Hazeldine], who’s been a bit injured. But Luke’s [Georgeson] a decent performer. And we’ve got obviously Harry Sixton and Toby [Hart] and Thomas O’Connor coming through with Mason Clarke.
I guess you could call it a mixed start to the season for the Volts. How do you feel about the first few months?
It’s an interesting culture down here because everyone’s very kind and very connected, and I often felt that when we played against Otago in the past, if they got on top, they could win games. But fighting back into the game is a struggle, and so that’s certainly something we’re focusing on. I think we’ve been OK when we’ve been up front, which hasn’t been very often. But in the last few games, we’ve really started to fight back into it. So I guess the way I’d describe it is it’s a young group, and I think they just need a bit of leadership and keep that consistent, and we’ll be OK.
I want to see growth. That’s really hard to quantify when you look at it from the outside, but when you’re on the inside, you want to see people taking the game on and their body language in game and how they respond to situations and whether they lead the game or whether they wait for the game to show them which way to go.
When you reflect on your playing career, what highlights spring to mind?
I think winning the county championship with Notts in 2010. And playing my first and only test match. They obviously smartened up after that — they realised pretty quick. I just wasn’t what they were after, and that’s how it is, and you can’t control that.
I guess there were some really good all-rounders about?
Yeah, I would never have considered myself an all-rounder. I was a bowler. I think there’s a big difference. I would say Jacob Oram, James Franklin, they were all-rounders. I was just a lower-order striker.
I guess T20 came a little too late for you?
I didn’t really like the white-ball format. It was always a red-ball format for me. I really enjoyed that. I think my record would suggest that as well. I loved the one test match I played, and I felt like I could hold my own at test level if I had more opportunities, but I didn’t get them.
Do you think you pulled the pin too early on international cricket?
No, not really. I think you really want to enjoy what you’re doing. I wasn’t enjoying it at international level. I found that whole scenario a bit too dog-eat-dog within the team. I probably wasn’t cut out for that. I think in another situation, in another environment, I might have been OK. But at the time, it wasn’t what I needed and it wasn’t helpful for me or my family. I just wanted to enjoy playing the game again and that’s what I found at Notts.
