Dale Benkenstein was always destined to lead

NICK FRIEND: Gloucestershire's new head coach was captaining teams as a 10-year-old, replaced Malcolm Marshall as Natal's skipper aged 22, led Durham to unprecedented success and then left playing behind to coach Hampshire back to Division One

Fate had it written for Dale Benkenstein's son, Luc, to make his professional debut against Durham, the club where his father remains a figure revered for his part in one of modern county cricket's most dominant teams. Afterwards, the locals swarmed for his teenage signature, but on his dad's old shirts.

That marks the esteem in which their former captain is held and offers a reminder of his status as domestic royalty, having transformed the fortunes of England's youngest county.

"We went from a culture of not expecting to win to almost thinking we could win all the time," Graham Onions told The Cricketer last year, reflecting on his immediate impact as a captain. Will Smith said the same, as did Chris Rushworth, and so too Jon Lewis. Whoever you asked, wherever you looked, Benkenstein's arrival in the northeast changed everything.

Gloucestershire's new head coach is softly spoken and disarmingly modest, however. Sat in an armchair at the recently opened café next to the pavilion at Bristol, he appears genuinely taken aback by such testimony. "It's very kind of the guys to say that," he smiles, "but I think there were a lot more factors than just me."

He has noticed parallels between then and now in his first six weeks on this new job: two "physically small" clubs, ambitious and ready to achieve something perhaps perceived elsewhere to be beyond their means. Benkenstein recalls his Durham chairman, Clive Leach, who sold him a determination to win and not just produce fast bowlers for England, though they did that anyway.

"It was something that was already brewing," he says, "and I feel a little bit of that here. They want to win, while maintaining a good balance of wanting to develop players all the time. I feel like we're growing."

The South African is a rarity at Gloucestershire as an external appointment to the cricket side of the business: he replaces Ian Harvey, a club legend who temporarily filled the void left by the departure to the ECB of Richard Dawson, a former player for the county before leading expertly for six years. Before him was John Bracewell, a five-time trophy winner.

Benkenstein arrives with fresh eyes and a different impetus – James Bracey has already raved of his advice on the tactical and mental aspects of batting. Chris Dent endured a peculiarly mediocre year by his standards in 2021, while Ryan Higgins was short on runs but typically prolific with the ball. As a team, they won eight red-ball games – their most since 1998 and more than any other county.

^{Benkenstein captained Durham to Friends Provident Trophy glory in 2007 - a win that set the tone for all that followed (Tom Shaw/Getty Images)}

"Last year, there were real steps forward," notes Benkenstein. "I'm sure they've proved to themselves now that they can compete, so it's about taking that next step. What I see is very exciting. It's a different chemistry to Durham: the north-east people, the natural attributes that we could use there, the pitch that suited fast bowlers that we used to our advantage. It's for me to find out what I've got here that I can utilise – it won't be the same but we're trying to get to the same result.

"At Durham, we were a very new county and we'd only been around for 20-odd years. Not only had we not been competing, we were pretty much the bottom of the bottom."

That changed with the Friends Provident Trophy in 2007: the first major honour in the county's history.

"It wasn't just for the players," he explains, "but for the whole region it was great to know that they had a team that they could really support."

Benkenstein was always going to be a leader. He happily admits that when he looks back on his career, "the standout thing wasn't the batting or the bowling but the captaincy". He had grown up leading teams from the age of 10, and at 22 was the choice of Graham Ford – via encouragement from Malcolm Marshall – to succeed the great West Indian at Natal in 1996.

When he was crowned as a Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 2009 – for services to Durham's maiden County Championship success – he paid hefty tribute to Marshall in acceptance of the honour. "He took the art of captaincy to another level," he said then, an opinion that has never wavered. When Benkenstein met Bristol's local media on a Zoom call from South Africa late last year, he reiterated that stance. And when he chats here, relentlessly calm amid the screaming children in the background, he is keen once again to talk up his mentor.

"Even though he wasn't a coach, he probably taught me more than most coaches," says Benkenstein. "He was always seen as a fast bowler, but with his knowledge of the game and his ability to move fielders, know the angles, how to take wickets, change bowlers and read pitches, I was so lucky to have him there.

"For my part, I listened and I learnt. He gave me the knowledge and the confidence to become a captain. I was lucky to be successful early on, and then my captaincy took off. So, he was a huge influence."

^{Benkenstein took over as Hampshire's coach straight out of playing (Stu Forster/Getty Images)}

At first, it meant skippering players almost twice his age, and suddenly his experience of school captaincy counted for nothing. "You get into a provincial side and there are probably four or five guys who've all captained at school." But Benkenstein made a hundred in his first match in charge and the rest was history. His knowledge of bowling – he was a useful part-timer but little more – stems from conversations with Marshall.

As well as Ford, he played under Duncan Fletcher with South Africa A and Bob Woolmer upon graduating to the senior national team. "I had great coaches," he adds, still grateful more than two decades later. Geoff Cook, who led Durham's golden era, "was incredible for me".

He found that captaincy brought the best out of his batting. "The way that it turned out showed it to be the right decision," he reflects. "I loved it."

But you only know that's the case once you've tried it, and that will be the task facing Graeme van Buuren, Benkenstein's chosen one as Gloucestershire's new red-ball skipper. In a way, Dent's resignation shortly before the end of last season presented the ideal opportunity for the new head coach to stamp his authority on a team that doesn't otherwise need much of an overhaul. Had there not been a gap that needed filling, the impression given by Benkenstein is that he wouldn't have made a change. Certainly, he has shown that to be the case in the limited-over role, where Jack Taylor is due to continue as planned.

The South African connection is incidental rather than any prior association existing between the pair. Benkenstein reckons he coached against van Buuren when the allrounder played for the Titans franchise, but otherwise this is a fresh relationship. "He's a legend back home," said van Buuren, speaking to The Cricketer last month, "and he seems like a really good man."

For Benkenstein, the criteria were straightforward: "You have to pick someone who's good enough to be in the team and I also think it has to be someone who puts the team first." Pleasingly, there were multiple candidates, including some who weren't keen "for good reasons" when the idea was put to them. "They wanted to concentrate on their cricket."

Van Buuren is one of the circuit's more positive figures, slight in stature but a smiler and a dogged, skilful cricketer. Benkenstein calls this "a real challenge for him", knowing what it's like to captain a county side, no matter how successful. "It's also a great opportunity to move things forward and for him to work with me. We have some really good cricket brains, so he has our support. But he does need to take ownership of that."

^{His former teammates credit Benkenstein with fostering the environment that led to Durham's first County Championship title (Gary M. Prior/Getty Images)}

Also at his disposal is a close-knit squad that came to van Buuren's own aid last summer, when his eligibility was thrown up in the air by bureaucracy. Others have spoken previously, too, of a tight dressing room that has come together over family tragedy in recent years. In keeping with that theme, the morning after his arrival from South Africa in February, Benkenstein was back on the road again.

Will Brown, the county's chief executive, was keen for the club to bond across the board, so a team-building trip was arranged in Newquay for 54 staff members across various departments and the playing group. And while that wasn't his idea, it fits into the Benkenstein ethos: "I got to meet every single person in the club. Sometimes that takes you two or three years."

Among the activities were golf, surfing and a trip to a brewery. "If you had to pick three things that I enjoy in my life, all three of them were spot on," he laughs. "Just the weather wasn't exactly Africa, so I skipped the surfing, although the surf was really good, and I am a surfer."

Otherwise, the majority of the time was spent in large discussions around teamwork and respect. "Because we're all trying to do one thing – and a lot of departments actually need the players, and the players need the admin staff – if we can understand and respect each other, the club functions much better."

He recalls the culture instilled at Durham as a worthy precedent: "People think we had these big masterplans, but we really just scouted well and had the players. And we had so much fun as well. It's a tough haul to win competitions; it's a six-month process.

"Sometimes, you can try to be so professional that guys just burn out, and you lack that bit of natural flair. So, I find that is really important: yes, we want to be really professional in what we do; but we also want to enjoy what we do."

Of course, Benkenstein has been a successful head coach before in county cricket, and he is keen to touch on his experiences at Hampshire – a spell for which he remains immensely appreciative. There is an awareness that "I talk about Durham a lot", when actually where he is now is a more direct result of a punt taken by Giles White at the start of 2014.

Benkenstein hadn't even officially retired from playing at the time but had missed much of the previous summer with a shoulder injury; his coaching exploits hardly extended beyond a winter as batting coach at Sunfoil Dolphins, though he had been long-touted as Cook's heir-apparent at Durham – only to be away in South Africa when Cook suffered a heart attack, which led to Lewis filling in and ultimately taking the job on a full-time basis.

So, Durham wouldn't stand in his way when the opportunity arose down south. Two and a half years brought successive appearances on Finals Day and promotion in the County Championship. "If it wasn't for Hampshire having the foresight and the confidence in me to go from being a player straight into being a head coach, I definitely wouldn't be here now."

What did he learn from it? "They really set me up for this," he says. "I have a huge gratitude to them for doing that."

^{Hampshire were promoted from Division Two in Benkenstein's first season in charge (Stu Forster/Getty Images)}

In a way, it was a risk from all parties: Hampshire were investing in a novice, Benkenstein was dipping his toe into the water. "I found my feet, and I knew that I really liked it; it showed me that it was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. That made a difference.

"Playing and coaching in county cricket – there are similarities, but they are two different things and I have that experience. So, coming here is not that daunting because I know that I've done it."

That comment leads him to the subject of his son, beginning his own journey as a leg-spinning allrounder at Essex. Benkenstein is a proud father: chuffed that Luc wants to follow in his footsteps as a professional player, but also conscious of allowing him the space to do it his way. Born in Durban before following his father's career to England and back, he returned to the United Kingdom last April – alone and aged just 16 – to chase the dream.

"It's tough," he says, laughing but with a serious point to make of the dilemma facing a parent in his position. "There are tough parts for me, and I'm sure there are hugely tough parts for him. It's a no-win situation as a cricket coach and a father because you want to back your son like you would as a father, but then people see you as a coach and they're like: 'Well, he's his son. Of course, you're going to back him.'"

He readily admits that he'd support him at Gloucestershire, such is his talent, but knows he is happy at Chelmsford.

South Africa had wanted him to captain their under-19 side, but his ambition is to play for England and Benkenstein Snr – a man of principle – "didn't feel it was right to use South African cricket up to a stage and then leave", so he encouraged him to take the plunge. Luc will be eligible when the next Under-19 World Cup comes around.

"He is very determined: at 16, he pretty much left us and he's been on his own over here. It's nice for me to be closer to him now.

"I'm his dad, so I'll give him advice and everything, but he also doesn't want to always take it because he wants to forge his own path. But I do think he listens. He doesn't say he does, but I think he does. I will always try to help him. What I do try to stay away from – and at times I've not been very good at it, though I think I have from an Essex point of view – is, if he needs to sort things out, then he needs to find the courage. I don't get involved in that."

There's another promising Benkenstein too, though he is only 13. "Whether he wants to do what Luc's doing, I'm not sure. But time will tell."

And the same will be true at Gloucestershire under their new head coach, a leader – and a father – respected all over the game.

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