Pierre de Bruyn became Leicestershire head coach in late 2016 © Getty Images
Pierre de Bruyn has left his role as Leicestershire’s head coach with immediate effect after tensions in the dressing became too much to resolve.
He had been named in the role a year ago and began last October as Andrew McDonald’s replacement. Leicestershire reached the quarter-finals of the NatWest T20 Blast this season but are currently bottom of Division Two in the County Championship without a victory and did not make it out of the group stage of the Royal London Cup.
Graeme Welch and John Sadler will take charge of the first team until the end of the season. Welch might also be in the frame for the role of England’s new bowling coach.
De Bruyn first joined the club at the start of the 2016 season to work with 2nd XI before moving up to assistant coach. The promotion to head coach was his first high-profile position in cricket.
The news is not a complete surprise, though. De Bruyn had not endeared himself with senior players when he provided an unflattering appraisal of their recent performances ahead of the season and there were rumours of serious clashes key figures in the dressing room.
Notably, Angus Robson – the club’s highest Championship run-scorer in 2014 and second highest in 2015 – who left the club earlier in the season saying his relationship with the club had “broken down.”
And while de Bruyn insisted he was committed to bringing through young players, the Leicestershire teams remained uncomfortably reliant on imports – many of them not especially young – from far and wide.
“Sometimes things can’t wait until the end of a season and an issue has to be dealt with,” Wasim Khan, the Leicestershire CEO who appointed de Bruyn less than a year ago, told BBC Leicester. “At the end of the season we’ll do a thorough search and no doubt there’ll be interest from all over the world, but we want to make sure we get it right.
“People’s characters are very different – characters either gel or not with individuals in any dressing room in any sport. Sometimes there’s disconnection, and if it becomes too much of a gap and too much of an issue, action has to be taken. Pierre is a good man and we’ve tried to make it work as long as possible, but unfortunately it just hasn’t worked out.”
Most of all, though, it seems de Bruyn was simply unable to keep the squad on-side as he attempted to rebuild.
Matters appear to have come to a head on the final day of the Championship match against Kent at Canterbury last week. With the third day lost to rain, promotion-seeking Kent indicated they would be prepared to set-up a chase but de Bruyn declined to take part. For a club rooted to the bottom of the table, it seemed an oddly conservative response and one that appears to have infuriated both Kent and the Leicestershire captain, Mark Cosgrove. Rumours persisted that several more players were threatening to leave the club if de Bruyn remained.
“I would like to thank the board of directors for the great opportunity to become head coach of Leicestershire County Cricket Club, it has been a fantastic experience,” de Bruyn said in a statement. “I have enjoyed my time here and thank everybody at Leicestershire CCC for their support. I wish the club the best for the future and am now looking forward to the next challenge in my career.”
While Wasim’s suggestion that there will be interest in the coaching job from “all over the world” there might be a concern that Leicestershire has been a troubled club for some time now. Turing it around is clearly not at all straightforward.
George Dobell is a senior correspondent at ESPNcricinfo
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Source: ESPN Crickinfo