Middlesex Cricket announced that one of the Club’s finest T20 players, Owais Shah, is re-joining the Club as a specialist consultant white-ball batting coach.
With Mark Ramprakash already in place as the Club’s lead Consultant Batting Coach, Shah will work closely with Ramprakash and the Middlesex professional men’s squad ahead of and throughout the Club’s white ball playing schedule.
Shah’s brilliant Middlesex playing career came to an end in 2010, having amassed almost 8,500 white-ball runs for the Club, a run-tally only surpassed by two other batsmen, and he will always be remembered for his incredible knock at Finals Day at the Ageas Bowl in 2008, when is 75 off 35 deliveries saw Middlesex crowned T20 champions.
He represented England 88 times in white-ball cricket and brings with him a vast amount of experience of playing both internationally and in all of the world’s biggest T20 tournaments, including the ICC T20 World Cup, the Indian Premier League, the Caribbean Premier League, the Bangladesh Premier League, South Africa’s Ram Slam, and Australia’s Big Bash League.
Speaking of Shah returning to work with the Middlesex squad this summer, the Club’s Head of Men’s Performance Cricket, Alan Coleman, said:
“We are delighted to have Owais back at the Club and working with our professional playing group.
“As a player he had something really special, a real will to win and unbelievable skills in white-ball cricket to back that up. His record in the shorter forms of the game is exceptional and he will bring some real expertise to our white-ball coaching set-up.
“He has played in all of the world’s biggest T20 franchise tournaments, has experienced the pressures of international cricket, and is an exceptional coach who can put all these experiences to good use with our playing group, specifically the development of our young batters as they learn about the shorter formats of the game.”
On re-joining Middlesex, Owais Shah, commented:
“I started at the Club as an under eleven and played all the way through as a player until the age of 31. It is now a great honour to return to Middlesex as a Coach and help the younger guys develop quicker so that we can get the Club back to the top.”
A Guerilla and lifelong Middlesex fan, Tony Bishop was quite pleased with the development. “I think this is interesting and a positive sign the club is looking to learn from it’s past. I was at the 2008 Blast Final when his knock really set up our win. If Owais can get performances like that one out of the current team, then it would be great for Middlesex and the Blast as a whole,” Tony opined.
