26 Aug 2014

Sport: New Samoa cricket coach excited by challenge ahead

11:05 am on 26 August 2014

New Samoa men's cricket coach Anthony Bowler is excited about the challenge of leading a team in the international arena.

Bowler has been the head coach of the Ellerslie Cricket club and is a Cricket Development Co-ordinator at Auckland Cricket.

He replaces former player coach Murphy Su'a, who stepped down from both roles following last year's EAP T20 Championship.

Bowler's first task in charge is preparing for November's regional T20 Championship in New South Wales and he says a lot is riding on their performance.

"There's only the one EAP tournament a year and if you kind of don't win that then you've got to wait around for the following year's tournament so it's important we do well in the T20 qualifiers. If we get through that then we get through to the next stage of qualifying for the T20 World Cup. If we finish top four we then go on for a 50 over competition and if we win that we get into World Cricket League Six, which, again, just provides more regular cricket. Really, that's the key is to get more regular cricket for these guys and if we want to improve we need to be challenging ourselves with regular, strong competition".

The new Samoa men's cricket coach Anthony Bowler