Bob Carter exits New Zealand Cricket after 21 years as high-performance coach

Former New Zealand Women head coach Bob Carter is set to vacate his role as the high-performance coach. The news was made official by New Zealand Cricket (NZC) on Friday, August 8. With this, a 21-year-long journey comes to an end, during which Carter was involved with both the men's and women's teams to ensure top quality cricket on display at the international arena.

Carter expressed gratitude while mentioning how much he enjoyed collaborating with the teams. He also spoke on how despite overseeing a various amount of cricket across generations in which there have been several transformations in terms of technique, the fundamentals have still remained the same. 

"I feel like I've lived the dream. I've very much enjoyed offering support and contributing and, if that's helped players or teams go on and achieve success, then that's terrific - I'm delighted. But I think what's worked best at NZC has been the combinations, the teamwork, and the cooperation," stated Carter as per a press release by NZC.

"It's true that the game has evolved a great deal over the past twenty years. But the flipside is that the basics and fundamentals of batting and bowling have never really changed. Sure, the batters are playing shots we wouldn't have dreamed of in the 90s and the bowlers are producing options and change-ups with an incredible degree of difficulty. But within all that, the framework that allows the players to execute so successfully, is still the same as it was 50 years ago," added Carter.

The 65-year-old spoke positively on the domestic cricketing system of the men's and women's structure. He believes that the domestic competition, especially in women's cricket in the country, has led to strengthening of the national cricketing structure.

"Our domestic cricket is very strong. I'm not sure that's widely recognized. The reason the BlackCaps have continued to produce great batters and bowlers is because we have a strong, underlying domestic system. The White Ferns have been in transition over the past couple of years, but the domestic competitions have brought new players through and invigorated the established ones," he mentioned further.

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Speaking of Carter's journey in coach, he joined New Zealand men's set-up in 2004 as an assistant coach to John Bracewell. After a five-year stint, he was again appointed as assistant coach to Mike Hesson from 2012 to 2014 . This was before he took over from Haidee Tiffen as New Zealand Women's head coach in 2019. He was their coach in the 2020 T20 World Cup and the 2022 ODI World Cup that New Zealand hosted.