New Melbourne Renegades’ coach would like to see closer ties between Victorian cricket and the Big Bash team

Former Australian player Cameron White only recently considered becoming a head coach but now that he is the Melbourne Renegades new mentor, back in Victoria, he’d like to see his home state embrace some change.

New Melbourne Renegades coach Cameron White wants Cricket Victoria to work more closely with the state’s Big Bash League teams to help turn around years of underperformance.

Victoria’s longest-serving Sheffield Shield captain and a former national white-ball skipper renowned for having one of the shrewdest minds in Australian cricket, White has signed as coach of the Renegades for the next three seasons, edging former Tasmanian coach Adam Griffith for the role to replace David Saker.

The Renegades won just two matches last summer to finish second-last in the BBL.

It marks a return to Victorian circles for White more than five years after he was let go by the state team and the Renegades, having claimed a domestic treble in 2018-19. The Renegades’ BBL title that summer remains the sole men’s or women’s Big Bash League crown claimed by a Victorian club.

Cameron White during his time as a player at the Melbourne Renegades. Picture: George Salpigtidis/Getty Images

After a brief playing stint with the Adelaide Strikers, White has served as an assistant coach first under Jason Gillespie in Adelaide and then at the Sydney Sixers beneath his longtime mentor Greg Shipperd.

White, 40, will next month form part of Ricky Ponting’s coaching panel with Major League Cricket’s Washington Freedom.

Ponting – through his role as head of strategy with the Hobart Hurricanes – and Shipperd, are now the opposition, at least on the BBL front, but White doesn’t anticipate those relationships changing dramatically.

“I’m on WhatsApp and text message threads with those guys and a heap of people,” White told this masthead.

“Whether you’re talking AFL footy or you’re talking cricket. Greg and I have known each other since I started playing the game professionally. So I think when we were chatting the other day, when I gave him the news about the job and that I was heading south, one of the things he said was ‘that the phone’s always on, keep chatting.’ At the end of the day, they’re also your friends as well.”

White had interest from Queensland Cricket around their vacant men’s coaching roles but had been keen to remain based in Victoria with wife Jacqui and their two daughters.

He said that his mind had only turned to becoming a head coach relatively recently. While a hard-nosed cricketer during his playing days, White has mellowed and says his style will be centred on building relationships.

Cameron White’s attention only recently turned to becoming a head coach. Picture: Supplied

“I was really enjoying the real hands-on sort of side of (being) an assistant coach,” White said.

“(However my style is) really communication and relationships based, being able to understand how players think especially under pressure, and then I think with my skill set, that’s one of the areas that I can really help players.

“Which I think is probably the main difference, being more on the tools as an assistant. You’re probably throwing a lot more balls and not talking as much whereas head coaching is more talking and chatting.”

The Renegades have made just one finals series since that 2018-19 title, while the Melbourne Stars have missed out in four straight seasons.

Such chronic struggles led to CV employing BBL-winning coach Wade Seccombe and ex-Test paceman Clint McKay in new high performance roles aligned to the Renegades and Stars respectively.

White said Victorian cricket needed to remain as unified as possible if the state was going to have BBL success.

“I think there’s definitely challenges and disadvantages with having a two-team state compared to the other one-team states,” he said.

“But (we need to) somehow turn (that) into an added advantage. That’s one of the things we sort of spoke about (through the interview process) and over the last couple of weeks. I think there’s no point being separate. I think it’s trying to work together in terms of the Renegades and Cricket Victoria. Obviously, there’s separate entities that are there, that are the Stars and the Renegades, but it’s about trying to make it work as best we can until there’s some sort of advantage. But I’ve been out of here for a while. So I’m just going to need to sort of get a handle on how things work.”

White said he was unsure how much access the Renegades would have to Test spinner Nathan Lyon next season given fixtures had not yet been supplied to clubs. Lyon did not play a match last summer although the Test calendar for 2024-25 is theoretically friendlier in terms of Australian Test players being free for the BBL.

The new coach said he was already scouring his global networks for international acquisitions but did not go into specifics.

Originally published as New Melbourne Renegades’ coach would like to see closer ties between Victorian cricket and the Big Bash team