Welsh Fire hosted Oval Invincibles at Sophia Gardens on Sunday
` Sport were granted exclusive behind-the-scenes access three days before and during the Welsh Fire v Oval Invincibles game in The Hundred.
The Welsh Fire players enter a function room in Sophia Gardens.
It’s been three days since they were beaten by The Hundred in game one and 24 hours before their second game against Oval Invincibles.
Cricketers are notorious for disliking meetings, so much so has the Fire chosen not to call them to meetings.
There are two flipcharts at the front of the room. Sitting next to them is Fire head coach Gary Kirsten, and next to him is Tom Dawson-Squibb, the team’s performance coach and Kirsten’s right-hand man.
“Can the top three batsmen from the last game get up?” asks Dawson-Squibb to begin.
Slightly reluctantly, Tom Banton, Joe Clarke and Ollie Pope step up, followed by their opponents, three bowlers.
“We will start the game.”
Players take turns trying to spell a word backwards – first great, then tremendous. None of the attempts are successful.
Next comes Kirsten, the former South African batter and coach who won the World Cup with India, and begins with a recap of the opening-game loss to Southern Brave.
The 54-year-old is calm. He holds the room with the players in a semicircle in front of him.
He flips through a powerpoint presentation highlighting some of the team’s struggles after losing when they went first by just 107 runs.
“Any comments on our hitting?” he quietly asks the players, who are all dressed in firefighter training gear – some with bucket hats added.
There’s an awkward pause. Finally, the English racket pope breaks the silence while eyes look elsewhere and down.
“We didn’t want to start that way, but we don’t want to go into it any further,” he says. “These recordings can be done on another day.”
The Fire Squad is much more comfortable breaking up into smaller groups after the initial check to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of their next opponents – the room is now a sea of people shadowing gunfire or deliveries.
After 15 minutes they come back together to talk as a group.
“His jail escape is the Yorker under pressure,” is a sentiment from an Invincibles bowler who was a teammate of one of the Fire elsewhere.
When the discussion turns to one of the Invincibles’ top hitters, Rilee Rossouw, the feedback is, “Don’t throw the same ball twice. Don’t wait to hit him far. You frustrate him immediately (wide Yorker).”
Fire lost by nine wickets to Southern Brave in their first match of The Hundred last week
Throughout the conversation, Kirsten drives the discussion but does not lay out any specific plans or tactics. Australian weirdo Adam Zampa and English seaman Jake Ball are two of the most regular speakers.
Also in the room is Fire Department data analyst Ben Jones.
He largely takes a back seat, but when the suggestion is made that Rossouw should throw slower balls, he points out that the South African has one of the best records against such deliveries in the world.
“Oh,” is the reply, with a few wry smiles floating around.
As the meeting progresses, tension builds around the use of data analytics. Where does the data say you should bowl? Should the players think for themselves?
Some stay calm. Some are excited to hear the numbers, but when Kirsten ends the meeting after about 40 minutes, others seem to have spent too much time worrying about the opposition.
Earlier that day, Fire’s Overseas star David Miller joined the squad after missing the first game as he was on international duty with South Africa.
On the way to training, he meets some of his teammates for the first time in the team bus.
Miller breaks the ice: “So how was the first game guys?”
Otherwise the bus is quiet – players in the back, coaches in the front – apart from Kirsten, who makes the 15-minute bike ride from the posh team hotel in Cardiff Bay to the stadium.
Upon arrival, Miller finds his home in the dressing room in one of the few available spots, a sofa in the middle of a room otherwise covered with bags, bats, helmets and other cricket gear.
The rest of the squad only entered the dressing room for the first time 24 hours before – the nature of The Hundred means Welsh Fire are taking over a space normally occupied by Glamorgan.
As each player arrived, they carefully looked around before choosing their seat. Josh Cobb, the quiet and understated captain of Fire, in the corner and the rest roughly divided with batsmen on one side and bowlers on the other.
They eat in a small, windowless room. A group sits around a phone watching the Fulham-Liverpool Premier League game, with fantasy football adding extra motivation.
Less than an hour before the game, Kirsten brings the players together on the outfield. “Be aggressive,” he says as he leads a team call.
Tactical discussions are reduced to a minimum.
Cobb has already received a “captain’s pack” of data from the analyst.
It’s simple and color-coded. Green means a duel in Fire’s favor and Red to avoid, such as Invincibles beating Sunil Narine on Spin for destructively attacking slow bowling.
With Fire in the field in the first innings, the dugout is initially relaxed – helped by a good start with the ball.
“If we catch him with a slower ball, I’ll go home,” Jones jokes as Rossouw, the player discussed more than anyone else in the team briefing, intervenes early on.
He cracks his third ball for four – cue nervous tension – but then gets a thick edge on a full, wide delivery next and gets caught.
“Wide hole!” shouts one of the coaches on the bench. It’s a perfectly executed plan – if not quite as expected.
But as the innings go on fire, they’re pushed onto their back foot by opener Will Jacks, who hits 81 balls from 45.
Kirsten stands directly in front of the shelter the entire time, watching alongside Dawson-Squibb.
Fire conceded 63 from the last 20 balls and powered the Invincibles to 158-5, a challenging result.
The locker room is silent as batters search for equipment. There is no time for speeches or a rallying cry.
“Be busy,” Kirsten tells Pope as he wanders around to whisper a word in each batter’s ear.
Bowler David Payne offers more advice. “Take your time,” he says to Pope. “The ball doesn’t grab or something.”
Kirsten makes his first tactical decision after 15 balls in pursuit. He turns to Pope and Ben Duckett, both of whom have stepped into the dugout to bat next, and tells the latter to bat next if a wicket falls to get a left-hander on the crease.
But the fire chase begins to unravel. First Tom Banton leaves, then Joe Clarke returns, shaking his head after being caught.
The analyst offers Kirsten occasional observations, but the bench falls silent—very quietly—while eyes are on the field ahead.
Kirsten moves from his seated position to stand by the dugout, but any emotion bubbling beneath is not visible behind a serious expression, dark sunglasses, and a red fire hat.
Fire loses by 39 runs — their second loss in a row.
It’s almost an hour after the game as Kirsten speaks to the players who spent time signing autographs and posing for selfies.
The room is silent. Kirsten stays calm.
“We all know it’s not nice to lose,” he says. “It’s not me standing up and saying it’s unacceptable.
“We stand up and say we can do better. When we come back we need to be a better version of ourselves.”
Welsh Fire hope to do so in their third game against Birmingham Phoenix on Saturday.
Whether Kirsten’s composure will be tested in the coming weeks remains to be seen.
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