Ashley Giles calls for Bears to develop killer streak

Sep 16 2008 by Brian Halford, Birmingham Mail

ASHLEY Giles has called upon Warwickshire’s players to be more “ruthless” as the season approaches its climax.

Director of Cricket Giles is happy with his squad’s progress during his first season in charge.

But there remains much room for improvement. And Giles has picked out two areas – killer instinct and fielding – as priorities.

“I am proud of a lot of what the guys have done,” he said.

“They have bought into what we want to do here. They have listened and learned and the dressing-room atmosphere has been very good.

“We still have a couple of games to go and promotion remains our priority – we are certainly ahead of where we might be.

“I don’t want to push too hard. The players have delivered quite a lot in my first 12 months here.

“But we still need to go on again. We need to be more ruthless. We need to know our roles a bit better and deliver our roles more consistently.

“We also need to catch better and field better in general. One thing I wanted when I came into the club was to focus more on fielding drills.

“Only when you get into the season do you realise what little time you have to do that when you want to give guys rest time as well.”

It has been a season of only gradual advance from Warwickshire but Giles believes foundations have been laid for more eye-catching progress ahead.

“I don’t think we are badly placed,” he said. “We haven’t made any massive acquisitions apart from Rikki Clarke and have three batsmen averaging 60 or 70 and one in the 40s.

“Bowling-wise we need a couple of guys who are going to get us 50 wickets a season but we might have found one of those in Chris Woakes.”