I changed a lot as a bowler. I started as a young tearaway with a very long run-up. In my first season of Sheffield Shield cricket I would bowl quite a few no-balls – which cost two runs at the time – and, coupled with that long run, I’d sometimes bowl five- or six-minute overs. My captain would say, ‘Look, you’re a good young bowler but we can’t afford to be behind the over-rate’. That was something I needed to improve.

Our physio at South Australia was a bloke by the name of Steve Saunders who’d been a hurdler in the Commonwealth Games and done a bit of long jump as well. As a non-cricketer he couldn’t get his head around how you could bowl a no-ball. He said, ‘As a hurdler over 110m, we have to know exactly how many steps we take and the strides between each hurdle. As a long jumper, if we’re half an inch over the line three times, that’s four years of work out the window’. That really resonated with me. I started to work really hard to know everything about my run-up and my no-ball problem went away.

I had a pretty poor time in the 2005 Ashes. When I got back to South Australia I spoke to a couple of people and the consistent theme was I was getting across myself on my front-foot landing, as I mentioned earlier. I was almost looking for the silver bullet on that tour. I was messing around with my run-up and looking for things that weren’t there. It was a battle. When something’s going on with a player and they’re not performing well, you can almost always take it back to them overthinking things. It happens a lot and it’s no coincidence. Then I got back to South Australia, really simplified things, and had a very good Shield season. That was probably the one time I was found wanting but to give England credit they targeted me and had a bit of success. I got dropped before I could rectify it but if I was the Australian selector or captain I would have made the same decision.

If players ask me about my career and my experiences, of course I’ll share them. And I’ll certainly share my 201 not out story! But as a general rule I try to avoid talking about my own career and saying things like, ‘Oh, when I played the game…’ because most of the time it’s irrelevant. When you go into coaching it’s not about you. It’s about the player and how you can help them.