Chasing The Hundred glory, the Manchester Originals women’s team will have their third coach in five seasons, with Michael Klinger set to take over as head coach for the 2025 season. Klinger replaces Stephen Parry, who held the role for 2023 and 2024 seasons.
Under Paul Shaw (2021-2022), the Manchester Originals struggled to make an impact in The Hundred. In the inaugural season, they finished 5th with just three wins and four losses from seven games. The following season saw the team slipping to 6th place, managing only two wins and four losses. Notably, experienced pacer Kate Cross captained the side both seasons, emerging as their leading wicket-taker in 2021. Meanwhile, Lizelle Lee was the team’s standout batter in both campaigns.
Stephen Parry replaced Paul Shaw as head coach, and the Originals made a significant change by letting go of Kate Cross to another club and appointing leading spinner Sophie Ecclestone as their captain. However, the shift in leadership failed to change the team’s fortunes. In 2023, the Originals once again finished 5th with three wins, and in the 4th edition of the competition earlier this year, they managed only three wins again, slipping to 6th place.
With that record, the Manchester Originals are the only women’s team yet to advance to the knockout stages in The Hundred’s four-year history. The club’s search for “a world-leading women’s short-format head coach” has concluded with the appointment of Michael Klinger for the 2025 season.
Klinger enjoyed a successful domestic cricket career, including three T20 appearances for Australia, before spending seven seasons with Gloucestershire and retiring in 2019. Since then, he has transitioned into coaching, beginning as the head coach of the Melbourne Renegades in Australia’s Big Bash League (BBL) between 2019 to 2021.
He currently serves as the general manager of Washington Freedom in the United States’ Major League Cricket (MLC), an assistant coach with the Sydney Thunder in Australia’s Women’s BBL (WBBL), and the head coach of the Gujarat Giants in India’s Women’s Premier League (WPL).
On his appointment, Klinger shared, “This is an incredibly exciting opportunity for me, and I am eagerly looking forward to arriving at Emirates Old Trafford next summer. The Originals women have an extremely talented group of players, and we will have the opportunity to add to that with the squad retentions and draft coming up early next year.
“I hope that I can help the team to push on, achieve our ambitions and bring success to Manchester in the Hundred women’s competition.”
Notably, the Giants managed just two wins from eight games in the inaugural WPL season in 2023 and with Klinger at the helm the following year, the Giants once again managed only two wins from eight games, finishing 5th. Klinger’s one-year contract with the Manchester Originals means his ability to stage a turnaround with both the Giants and the Originals in 2025 will be under close scrutiny.
(Quote sourced from ESPN Cricinfo)
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