Ashes winner Richards ready to contribute to cricket Ashes winner Jack Richards is hoping to use his experience of success in sport and business to help develop cricketers. Richards was a key member of Mike Gatting’s triumphant squad in Australia in 1986/87 and has spent the last 28 years living in the Netherlands and Belgium and working in the shipping industry in the Netherlands. During that time Richards has progressed from a shipbroker to a chief executive and board member but, at the age of 57, he is about to retire and is keen to put something back into the sport he served so well. ” I am coming up 58, I am going to be retiring from the business I have been involved in so I’m looking for a change,” said the former Surrey wicketkeeper. ” Cricket in the past has given me a lot, I would like to look at opportunities how I can utilise my experiences to help players and teams. ” I think that I have got so much knowledge that I have built up through cricket, through sports and through business, for this experience to go to waste. ” The mentoring side is something that I am particularly interested in, utilising what I know about skill factors and the mental side of the game. I was only the second Cornishman to play for England but I am the only Cornishman to grow up playing Cornish cricket to go on and play for England. ” I also know what it’s like to deal with pressure, disappointments, performance and personal issues of which I have had my fair share during my career in cricket and shipping, but I also am aware how managing your goal set and success cannot be under estimated. ” I think that the experience I have gained in the Shipping industry should put me in good stead in mentoring and motivating people as well as toughening themselves up to be able to get on and be successful.” Richards already has coaching experience having assisted the Dutch national side as well as some work coaching in Hong Kong and Cornwall. He also guided the Belgium national team from a low ranking in Europe through to Division Eight of the World Cricket League play offs. He also managed and coached the Belgium Under-18 rugby team. He took his Level Three coaching award through Cricket Europe in Scotland where, ironically, one of the course tutors was Bruce French, his rival as England wicketkeeper all those years ago. Richards travelled to Australia expecting to be reserve to French but impressed in the warm-up matches and was picked ahead of French for the Test series. ” I always knew that I had to do something outside of cricket. I’d seen some old Test players having to fight for a living after the game either by going on too long or not being able to get involved in business, it was quite a shock for me,” Richards said. ” Expecting to be second choice I was prepared to fill in my time by studying for an opticians course, so I took a lot of books with me to Australia but I got picked, things worked out well and the books got put aside.” But Richards, whose wife is Dutch, began to spend time in Holland and made valuable contacts with the Dutch national cricket captain Rob van Weelde, whose father owned a shipping company. ” During some down time I spent time in Holland and used to go along to the nets at the V.O.C. club in Rotterdam where Rob and his father Wally were involved and I got to know them and maintained that contact so that they offered to employ me when I finished playing cricket,” he said. ” When I went to Australia on the Bicentenary tour that next winter and due to the previous summer selections I did some PR for the van Weelde Group which went well and on my return had discussions to start work after my benefit year.” Richards spent 24 years with the van Weelde Shipping Group, growing through the ranks including opening offices in Greece and the Philippines, to director of operations and owner’s representative. Being a self-made man in the shipping industry Richards is now director and a member of the governing board of iPS Powerful People, a recruitment and crewing company supplying professionals worldwide in the marine, towage, offshore gas and civil construction industries. He now hopes that his years of experience both on and off the cricket pitch combined with his business capability could be put to some use with cricketers or in the cricket world. {{ak_sharing}}
