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The Tasmanian Tigers represent the Australian state of Tasmania in cricket tournaments. They compete annually in the Australian domestic senior men's cricket season, which currently consists of the first-class Sheffield Shield, the limited overs Ford Ranger Cup, and the domestic Twenty20 competition known as the KFC Twenty20 Big Bash. They opened their season in late October, against South Australia.
Season background
Before the start of the season George Bailey replaced Dan Marsh, who resigned as state captain. "It will certainly be a big change," Bailey said. Bailey enjoyed leading the team meetings and spoke more to the men than Marsh, who is playing on and will continue to offer tactical advice. "He's certainly a massive mentor of mine over the years and still is," Bailey said. "I think I'll be more vocal. Dan was one to lead from the front with the way he played but wasn't a huge speaker in front of the group. I'm more comfortable doing that. My style will develop over the next couple of years."
After finishing fourth in the 2008–09 Ford Ranger One Day Cup season, Bailey wanted improvement from his team. "I keep going back to the people who have played quite a number of Shield games, it's time that they stepped up and were counted," he said. "People have said these guys have potential, but at some point the group has got to deliver. I'm included, along with Travis Birt, Rhett Lockyear, Luke Butterworth, Brendan Drew, Brett Geeves, Jason Krejza, Xavier Doherty. It's time that we started performing week-in, week out." If the team was consistent, he believed they will contend in all three competitions. Coach Tim Coyle said, "The challenge is to make the transition period as short as possible knowing, yes, we have got some new personnel, but to settle these people in really quickly and if we are developing a different game style and plan that we make sure we get that into our game very quickly. Hopefully the transition might only be a couple of months. We can't afford a transition period to take two years you won't be doing your job.
Along with Australian captain Ricky Ponting, the Tasmanian squad had three other players who have represented Australia at International level: Ben Hifenhaus, Brett Geeves and Tim Paine. "The last six months there have been six players from our program play for Australia or Australia A. That is 25 per cent of our squad with International experience in some way – it is a good result. If you look at it from that point of view we are doing something right," Coyle commented on the side's International success.