Sandy Strang: Scots could benefit from hard-nosed mentoring

HE BROUGHT his Bangladesh side to Titwood last summer, and, seemingly, made a poor impression on the Scottish cricket authorities.

An amalgam of hard-nosed abrasiveness and a thinly disguised contempt for the ambience bordering on the boorish did little to endear. Hardly the man who ticks the right boxes as a national coach. Indeed, Jamie Siddons, 47, once regarded as the finest Aussie batsman never to win a full Test cap - he did play in an ODI at Lahore in 1988, scoring 32 - is by many accounts a challenging man to like.

Yet consideration of his performance for the majority of his recently concluded tenure with Bangladesh is highly pertinent in the context of Scotland. Unequivocally, Siddons grasped the nettle from the outset and took his charges, in the current sporting buzz-phrase, "on to the next level". Especially the batters.

You don't get easy comfort zones with Siddons. Euphemisms are anathema. But the evidence is clear. A scorer of nearly 12,000 runs himself in the deeply unforgiving arena of the Sheffield Shield, steely Siddons took on talented underachievers like Tasmin Iqbal (one of Wisden's 2011 Cricketers of the Year), Junaid Siddique, Imrul Kayes and Raqibul Hasan, changed their mindset and enabled them to transform considerable potential into the hard currency of consistent runs. That's how they beat England and Ireland in the World Cup. That's how they thrashed the Kiwis in the recent ODI series.

And that's precisely what we here in Scotland now need. Richie Berrington, Ewan Chalmers, Ryan Flannigan, Olly Hairs and Preston Mommsen are all unquestionably seriously gifted young batsmen, but, presently, only Mommsen is showing the consistent capacity to convert ability into telling scores at the highest level. Siddons has now been snapped up on a three-year contract by delighted Wellington Firebrands CEO, ex-Kiwi Test star Gavin Larsen, whose son Corey is presently playing in Scotland in Dumfries with Western Union outfit St Michaels.

Although he doesn't officially take up office until later this month, pragmatic Siddons has already started to ruffle feathers. Big style. "I've looked at all the players and their averages, and even the senior players are not in the 40s with the bat. That needs to be turned around pretty quickly," he said. No messing about. Serious solutions, Siddons-style. There's a persuasive school of thought that this is the right type of heavy-duty mentoring required by our emergent batters.