Dougie Brown admits his first year in charge at Warwickshire was a “steep learning curve”.
Twelve months ago, Brown succeeded Ashley Giles as the Bears’ director of cricket – his first senior coaching role in county cricket.
He took over the county champions from a man who had just stepped up into the England camp. They were big shoes to fill.
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Plenty in his in-tray already, Brown was then hampered all summer long by a quite bizarre succession of injuries around his squad with numerous senior players ruled out for the medium and long terms.
With England’s selectors also constantly gnawing away at the team, the chances of Warwickshire successfully defending their title waned then disappeared. In the circumstances, it was an impressive effort to finish fourth.
The less said about limited-overs cricket the better. The T20 brought another failure to escape the group while the 40-over campaign started badly and deteriorated. Much better will be expected of Brown’s team next season.
But, a year into the job, Brown is comfortable with the challenges ahead – and happy that his team is on the right track to deliver.
“Last season we all learned a lot – the players, the coaches and myself particularly,” he said.
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“I learned an awful lot. Even though I had been around the squad in a coaching capacity for five or six years, there were things that surprised me.
“You know an environment so well that you think you know what it’s going to be like in charge, but it was different in some respects.
‘‘It is a very full-on job, very all-consuming, but that’s no problem because that’s how I work anyway. Twelve months on I have got a pretty good handle on things.
“It was a steep learning curve, especially with all the curve balls we had to deal with last summer with one injury after another.
‘‘It was a tough summer in a lot of ways because we always seemed to be fixing things but we learned a lot and actually still acquitted ourselves very well in the championship.
“It was pleasing to finish fourth. It wasn’t where we wanted to finish when we set out, of course, but to stay competitive in the circumstances was a great effort from the players. In fact, we got pretty close to successfully defending the title and if one or two little things had just gone our way we would have been even closer.
“But the injuries kept coming and that had a knock-on effect on our one-day cricket.
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‘‘Towards the end we had players injured and were still challenging in the championship so had to concentrate our resources on that.
“To me, if you don’t qualify in one-day cricket it doesn’t matter whether you finish third or sixth.
‘‘And we will benefit from the younger guys having played in those games because they tested themselves in first-team cricket.
‘‘Next season they will be better for having that experience under their belts.”
Warwickshire have, man for man, one of the strongest squads in county cricket and, given a reasonably clear run from injuries and international calls, they should be up there challenging for trophies.
Brown is happy with both the personnel at his disposal and the way they have shaped up in training during the winter.
But he is keen to keep a lid on expectations this year having found out in 2013 just how many slings and arrows can arrive to interfere with planning.
“Perhaps we went into last season with expectations a little bit too high,” he said.
“Right now we are in a really good place. The guys have worked very hard and the injury situation has eased.
“Of course, we can’t really know how the guys are until we get outdoors and get all our first-team players back and that won’t be until we play at Oxford and then when the season starts. But I am very happy with the way they look at the moment.
“During the winter they have worked hard and also worked smart.
‘‘We have worked really hard on specific areas, including our one-day skills, and I expect that to pay dividends next season.”