Bennett King is heading back to Albion as Queensland Cricket’s general manager of high performance, resuming a post he filled between 2019 and 2023.
The move, confirmed on 17 April, reunites the 60-year-old with the state he guided to three consecutive Sheffield Shield titles from 1999-2000 to 2001-02, long before his stint in charge of West Indies (2004-07). He steps in for former fast bowler Joe Dawes, who stood down last month after what the board politely calls “a challenging 12 months”, including a public disagreement with Usman Khawaja.
“Bennett returns to Queensland Cricket as an experienced and highly respected leader in high-performance environments. To welcome him back at this point in our journey is a significant moment,” said chief executive Terry Svenson. “His appointment will strengthen relationships with domestic and international cricket stakeholders and bring greater thought leadership and innovation to our programmes to achieve a competitive advantage.”
King’s brief is straightforward enough on paper: lift the men’s teams a rung or two. Last summer Queensland finished third in both the Shield and the Marsh One-Day Cup, while Brisbane Heat missed the BBL finals altogether. The women’s picture was mixed—Queensland captured the WNCL title, yet the Heat endured a win-less WBBL, slipping quietly to the foot of the ladder.
Insiders say King was preferred ahead of Tasmania’s high-performance manager Salliann Beams after a final interview round. The board valued his familiarity with the set-up and the calm he tends to project. One staffer described him as “the sort of coach who walks into a room and lowers the pulse rate by 10 beats”.
Early tasks include appointing two assistant pathway coaches and mapping a pre-season workload designed to reduce soft-tissue injuries—an area that hampered Queensland’s seam attack from November onwards.
None of this guarantees trophies, of course. Yet the prevailing feeling is that King’s pragmatic style might be the right fit just now. As one senior player put it privately, “He doesn’t do fireworks; he just gets people working in the same direction.”
