The Badger is_back
Paul Nixon has returned to Leicestershire as head coach, and is promising to take them out of the doldrums
Paul Nixon
Paul Nixon on T20 finals day in 2011, when he helped inspire Leicestershire’s last 1st XI trophy
Tom Shaw/Getty Images
Interview by Jacob Savill
In August 2016, Paul Nixon was guiding the Jamaican Tallawahs to their second Caribbean Premier League trophy in as many attempts. And this summer, he might have won it a third time, he tells me, had he not lost two of his gun allrounders to international duty – Imad Wasim and Shakib Al Hasan – at a moment’s notice.
But while Nixon was falling just short of his third CPL title, Pierre de Bruyn’s reign as Leicestershire head coach was imploding. And, after the South African’s sudden departure in September, there was, says Leicestershire chief executive Wasim Khan, only one outstanding choice for his replacement.
Nixon is a Foxes legend – he played for the club for almost 20 years, after a three-year sojourn at Kent, before retiring in 2011 – and his homecoming as head coach has that warm, fuzzy feeling of a returning collie who never really went away. More than that, Nixon’s experience in Jamaica, working with some of the biggest hitters (and egos) in whiteball cricket – Chris Gayle and Andre Russell, among others – taught him much about elite coaching.