Tasmanian captain Jordan Silk confident Tigers have options to replace spinner Jarrod Freeman
Tasmanian Tigers captain Jordan Silk is confident they can replace a spinner currently on indefinite leave with his potential return still up in the air.
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While he admits a return to the Tasmanian set-up will be ‘a bit of a process’ for Jarrod Freeman, Tigers captain Jordan Silk is confident they have the depth to cover the spinner’s loss this season should he not return.
Cricket Tasmania announced back in June that Freeman would step back from professional duties, citing mental health reasons, following what was a breakout domestic summer becoming the Tigers number one spin option.
Speaking for the first time on Tuesday since returning from an off-season abroad, Silk said Freeman had the full support of the organisation despite taking a step back from his professional duties.
“All we can do here at Cricket Tasmania is throw our complete support behind Jarrod,” he said.
“Cricket at the moment isn’t the priority for him. We hope to see someone like that come back and play for us, you know, as soon as they’re ready. It’s going to be a bit of a process, but we’ll see how that plays out.
“We can only really throw our support behind him as a group, as a collective, and wish him all the best in terms of a recovery.”
Freeman’s absence is set to open up an opportunity in the Tigers bowling group this summer with Silk believing a pair of off-season recruits would both be options for coach Jeff Vaughan this season.
“It’d be pretty hard to look past Matt Kuhnemann to come in and take that spot,” he said.
“He’s a quality spinner, he’s played test cricket recently and I’ve only been back for a few weeks, but he seems such a great fit into our group.
“I’m excited by having someone like that around who’s got that experience at the next level but also having seen sort of Rafael Macmillan as well in the last couple of weeks, I’m really impressed with what he’s got to offer.
“He’s a competitive kid and with a lot of skills. So there’ll no doubt be potential opportunities for him as well throughout the season.
“But it’s nice to have those sort of stocks there. It’s a handy thing to have. It’s hard to win these titles without good spinners, and I feel like we’re pretty lucky to have two pretty good ones there.”
After making last year’s Sheffield Shield final despite losing a host of experience the off-season prior, the Tigers will face much more expectation this summer compared to last but Silk was confident Tasmania’s young group could once again compete for silverware.
“That’s obviously the goal for us and I’m sure the five other states (to win titles),” he said.
“I think the beauty of last season is that we were able to expose quite a fair chunk of our squad to first-class cricket and to one-day cricket.
“And I think probably the start to last season that we had just really built the confidence within the group. So I think we know that that’s an important part of this season, is getting out of the blocks because we did that quite well last year.
“But from what I’ve seen it looks like the guys are ready to go to another level. I think there should be some absolute hunger within that group to want to, you know, be in that last game in March.”
The Tigers season kicks off with a one-day clash against Victoria on September 23.
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