Darren Lehmann

Darren Scott Lehmann (born 5 February 1970) is an Australian cricket coach and former cricketer who coached the Australian national team.

Lehmann entered the first-class scene as a 17-year-old in the 1987/88 season for South Australia, playing one match against Victoria at the Melbourne Cricket Ground after both Tim May and Peter Sleep were called into the national team.

After making 10, Lehmann was omitted upon their return and did not play any further part in the season.

In 1988/89, South Australia were at the bottom of the ladder, when coach Barry Richards called Lehmann into the team, playing against Western Australia at the WACA.

Lehmann remembered little of the match; after being struck in the right temple by a Bruce Reid bouncer, he was knocked unconscious and temporarily ceased breathing.

Lehmann made his mark in the following match against New South Wales Blues at Adelaide Oval, reaching 50, but the innings was marred by the manner in which it was ended.

Going for a quick single, Lehmann collided with bowler Geoff Lawson and was run out after falling over.

However, Richards and South Australian captain David Hookes claimed that Lawson had tripped Lehmann, leading to a confrontation between the two teams.

In 1989/90, Lehmann came into contention for national selection, after scoring 228 runs at the age of 19 in a match against New South Wales in that season.

He also scored a century against the touring New Zealand cricket team and followed that with centuries in three consecutive Sheffield Shield matches.

Having scored over 700 runs in the first half of the season, Lehmann was drafted into the Australian squad for the New Year's Test against Pakistan at the Sydney Cricket Ground after both openers David Boon and Geoff Marsh were injured.

He was on the fringes of national selection for the entirety of the 1990s, and only became a regular in the ODI team in 2001 and Test team in late 2002, before being dropped in early 2005.

Primarily an aggressive left-handed batsman, Lehmann was also a part-time left arm orthodox bowler, and gained renown for his disregard for physical fitness and modern dietary regimes.

Lehmann was not, however, rewarded with international selection, but he did participate in a Shield victory in 1990/91.

He was fortunate to play in the final, having needed facial surgery prior to the match after being struck in the nose during a training session.

Following another season, Lehmann expressed dissatisfaction, and returned to South Australia.

From the 1993/94 season until 2007/08, Lehmann played domestic cricket for his home state, South Australia, as well as for Yorkshire in England (from 1997 until 2006).

In 1995/96 he was a part of the South Australian team that claimed the Sheffield Shield.

Lehmann made his ODI debut in 1996 and Test debut in 1998.

During this time, Lehmann had great success as a player for both teams and he captained them both; South Australia from 1998/99 until 2006/07 and Yorkshire in 2002.

Playing for South Australia in this period, Lehmann scored over 10,500 runs in 107 first-class appearances for the state, at an average of around 55.

Lehmann was a member of the Australian team that won the 1999 Cricket World Cup and the 2003 Cricket World Cup, where in the 1999 final, he scored the winning boundary, and took the winning catch in the 2003 final.

He made 37 centuries with a top score of 301 not out against Western Australia at the Adelaide Oval in 2005/06.

He also took 44 wickets at an average of 38.06.

He held the record for the most first-class runs scored and first-class games played before selection to the Australian Test team prior to Michael Hussey's Test debut in 2005.

He announced his retirement from first-class cricket in November 2007.

He also coached the IPL teams Deccan Chargers from 2009 to 2012 and Kings XI Punjab in 2013.

He also coached Queensland during the 2010/11 KFC Twenty20 Big Bash, in place of Trevor Barsby who had resigned.

As Lehmann was not an opener, Mike Veletta and Tom Moody were selected, and he was relegated to being 12th man.

Lehmann was also called into the squad for the triangular ODI series, but after being unused, he was replaced by Mark Waugh.

The following year, Lehmann was lured to move to Victoria by John Elliott and Ian Collins, then directors of the Carlton Football Club with a lucrative deal for him to play district cricket for Carlton, as well as the Victorian state team.

Lehmann believed that he had a better chance of international selection, feeling that selectors disregarded batting performances at Adelaide Oval on the perception that it was a flat track.

In June 2013, Lehmann replaced Mickey Arthur as the coach of the Australian cricket team, only two weeks before the 2013 Ashes series.

Although Australia lost that series 3-nil, Lehmann went on to coach the side to a 5-nil victory in the 2013–14 series less than five months later.

During his time coaching Australia, he led the team to be the winners of the 2015 Cricket World Cup.

Lehmann stepped down as head coach after the fourth test match against South Africa in March 2018, following the ball tampering scandal which occurred during the match.

He was originally thought to have been involved in the scandal, however Cricket Australia cleared him of blame at the conclusion of their investigation.

Of German-Australian descent, Lehmann was a junior representative for South Australian National Football League (SANFL) club Central District as well as playing cricket.

Lehmann left school at the age of 16 to work on the assembly line of Holden car manufacturers in Elizabeth, South Australia.

He declined selection to the first intake of the newly formed Australian Cricket Academy, a full-time cricket centre, citing his enjoyment of the factory life.