How coaching is giving Yorkshire CCC’s Rich Pyrah the opportunity to satisfy his England ambitions

But as a coach he is aiming to do just that.

Pyrah, a fine performer at county level, hopes one day to be England’s bowling coach.

For now, he feels privileged to be doing the same job at Yorkshire, where his work in helping to develop a fine crop of bowlers has been rewarded with a coaching appointment with England’s Young Lions, with whom he is working this winter at the National Performance Centre in Loughborough.

“To get this recognition of working with England Young Lions, quite early in my career, has given me a bit of confidence in what I’m doing and obviously helps in terms of my reputation around the circuit as well,” said Pyrah.

“I am ambitious, and I look at the path that somebody like (England head coach) Chris Silverwood has taken.

“He worked around the same set-ups on his way to becoming England bowling coach a few years back.

“That’s my long-term goal – to be England bowling coach – and to go as far as I possibly can.

“My role at the minute is as good as I’m going to get; it’s one of the best jobs in the world, being bowling coach at Yorkshire, and the next jump, the best job ahead of mine, is England bowling coach.

“It’s quite early in my coaching, but I’ve found an area I really enjoy and I’ve had decent success in it so far, bringing a few of the young Yorkshire lads through, and I’ve got a really good relationship with them.

“Picking up the England Young Lions job is a feather in the cap, and a step on the road to my long-term ambition.

“There’s no rush to get there. As I say, this opportunity has come quite early, and if it takes me ten years or whatever to get to where I want to be, then that’s fine.”

Pyrah, 38, is working with 11 bowlers at Loughborough, while the Yorkshire first-team coach Andrew Gale is working with the Young Lions batsmen alongside Ian Bell. There is also a spin bowling camp.

Yorkshire have three players in the set-up: spinner Sam Wizniewski, along with wicketkeeper Harry Duke and Matthew Revis, both of whom are in the batting group.

Revis, 19, is also part of Pyrah’s bowling group.

The teenager made his solitary first-class appearance as a batsman in Yorkshire’s County Championship match against Kent at Emerald Headingley in September last year, but he is also a promising bowler.

Pyrah explained: “‘Rev’ has shot up these last couple of years and he’s six foot four now.

“He’s got all the attributes bowling-wise; he’s a big strong lad, and we’re going to try and take his bowling a little bit more seriously and make him into a genuine all-rounder.

“He’s been a prolific run-scorer through age-group cricket and Academy cricket; he got 180 in our second team against Sussex before he played in that first team match (against Kent).

“He’s never really taken his bowling seriously because he’s always been quite a heavy run-scorer in junior cricket, but to get in professional teams nowadays you need at least two attributes, so if it comes down to it in the future where he’s on a par with his batting with somebody else but he can also be a fourth seamer, then that’s gold dust.”

Pyrah not so much had two strings to his bow as a player but three.

Not only was he a talented batsman, good enough to average 30 in first-class cricket, but a fine bowler too, particularly in the one-day formats, and he was one of the best fielders that Yorkshire have ever had.

Pyrah experienced many ups and downs in his career, having had to fight for his place at times, and he believes those experiences serve him particularly well in a coaching capacity.

“What I’ve got to my advantage, I think, is that I’ve been to the top of county cricket, I’ve won two Championships, but I also know what it’s like to be in-and-out of the side as a player, I know what it’s like to be dropped, to go down into the second team, and so on,” he said.

“I’ve dealt with and played with a number of international players, and I feel as though I’ve got a broad sense of what’s needed for players to be successful.

“As a player, I knew I was quite limited and I was never going to make another step up, but I finished playing at a young age and I also did a lot of coaching when I went down into the second team as a senior player, so that put the stepping stones in place from quite a young age really in terms of my coaching.

“I retired at 32 and went straight on to the (Yorkshire) coaching team, but it wasn’t as abrupt as that.

“For the last two years, I’d been going back down to the second team when I wasn’t playing red-ball cricket – I was playing all the white-ball stuff – and I played quite a key role in being a senior player and leading that young team, and that’s really where I got the appetite for it (coaching), and probably where the club saw potential in me as a coach and as a leader.

“I love it, to be honest.

“My rapport with the players is really important to me, and my relationship with them, because you can be the best technical coach in the world but if you haven’t got the respect of the players and a good relationship with them, then it’s wasted, really, the information that you’re putting over.

“I love working with the Yorkshire lads and I’m loving this time with the Young Lions.

“There’s some really exciting talent around the country, and it’s great experience working with other players, other coaches, and I’ve got the opportunity now to go on and get further on with my coaching than I ever did as a player, so that’s really exciting from a personal point of view.”

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