In an honest conversation, Mickey Arthur breaks down his coaching philosophy and explains how being sacked by Australia helped him become a better coach during stints with Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Also why he's taken on a different challenge as head coach of struggling English domestic side Derbyshire, where he has just signed a three-year contract extension after starting to turn the club's fortunes around, and why he's so passionate about often-maligned county cricket.

You said your coaching career would not be fulfilled without a stint in county cricket and since taking the job at Derby, you've talked about how impressed you've been with the quality of the domestic English game. You're not a supporter of the widescale changes proposed by Sir Andrew Strauss' High Performance Review into English cricket. Do you believe more minor tweaks are needed?

Yes, I have been an advocate of that simply because I think the structure around county cricket is very good. Yes, there are scheduling issues and those obviously we can look at, but the actual core county cricket is outstanding. I see it as the fabric of the English summer. It's good cricket, it's competitive cricket. It's very structured, very organised. I've loved being involved in county cricket for the simple reason that it's day-in and day-out development of players. There are so many things that you want to achieve. Promotion [from Division Two of the County Championship] is always something that we want and want badly. And then we want to test ourselves and see how far we go in white ball comps. So, you have that all in county cricket. The rhetoric around county cricket sometimes gets to me because I've seen first class cricket around the world. And sometimes you're trying to degrade something that's on your doorstep when I think it should be applauded to be honest.

I can hear the passion you have for county cricket.

Without a doubt, I wanted to bring that passion to Derbyshire. Derbyshire is a county close to my heart since working with the likes of Eddie Barlow and Fred Swarbrook, and my first season with the club has only made that feeling grow. I'm very passionate about our players and making them be the best they can be. It's a great project. It's one that I kind of needed at that stage of my career having been 12 years in international cricket, 12 years continually on the road. The last five years of which were in Pakistan and Sri Lanka in a hotel. So, having a stable base, working towards a goal that the whole county is receptive to and has bought into, I find very rewarding at the moment.

What keeps you ticking as a coach? Is it those new challenges?

This is a different challenge that's motivating me. And I kind of wanted to do it with a county like Derbyshire. You can go to a place where you've got all the resources in the world and the job becomes a lot easier. But I wanted to leave a legacy. I wanted to come into Derbyshire and leave a legacy and say that during those years, we were a county that played to the best of their ability, a county that provided some really good positive cricket, and a county that achieved everything that they could possibly achieve. So, that's kind of where I sit with it. And as I say, I'm really, really all over it at the moment.

I love the adrenaline rush of match day. The one thing for me that I'm battling with now in the winter is not having that adrenaline rush of matchday because I'm so used to having it all year round. But you know, I'm going to a couple of franchise tournaments. If I go to those franchise tournaments, that kind of keeps me relevant and keeps that burning fire going in terms of those sort of comps. It keeps me in touch with the different strategies and tactics in the white ball game around the world. But my passion and my drive and my stability is with Derbyshire and that's what I'm really enjoying.

You said when you took the Derbyshire job that you wanted Derbyshire to play without fear. Has that always been part of your mantra as a coach?

Yes, definitely. I've tried to take the opposition out of the equation in teams I've been with, and tried to make ourselves the best version of ourselves we can be. I know that sounds a cliche, but within all that, it takes a hell of a lot of work. I always look at four layers that you improve the players on: it's technically, tactically, physically and mentally. And we build a lot into everybody's individual player plan to make sure that we've got everybody becoming that best version of themselves. Some guys take a bit longer than others, some guys need a little bit more love, some guys need a little bit more fire, if you like. You've got to get to know those guys.

But collectively, we've seen something special start developing. And when you see that collective buy-in to a philosophy, to a goal, to a challenge, it becomes quite powerful. That's where I feel we're sort of sitting at the moment. We haven't achieved anything yet, we've just shown that we're a little bit better than we have been. We've had players play above the first-class averages, which is always a good indication that their ceiling is a lot higher than might have been thought previously. But we're on the right track and that's my excitement.

You've coached around the world and are continuing to do so. I wonder how your coaching style has developed and whether you have had to adapt to the countries and the teams that you've worked with?

That's evolved massively. It's like as a player, you become better and better, you know. I think I'm the best version of myself now, as a coach. I think I reached the best version of myself [as a coach] in Pakistan. When I started with South Africa, I was 35, 36. I hadn't been in the coaching game that long. And I was very lucky with South Africa. I got a team of some very talented individuals, a very young captain in Graeme Smith and him and I bumbled along for the first year or two. But we eventually found a system, a combination that really worked and came out of those five years with South Africa with a lot of success.

I obviously adapted my style then going to Australia with Western Australia, and then Australia. And that's the one job that ended in tears, the one I was sacked from. I don't think there's any coach in the game, or any high-profile coach in the game, who hasn't been sacked.

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And I think when you get sacked, you actually sit back and take stock of where you are, where you are as a coach, what could I do differently. And it took me a while to work all that out. That's why I think - going through the franchise leagues during that period and trying to find myself again as a coach - where it prepared me very well to step into the Pakistan job.

Then those were probably some of the most rewarding years of my coaching career, finding some young talent and actually seeing them develop and become world class. Babar Azam was number one in the world; Shadab Khan, Shaheen Shah Afridi. The likes of those players developing as they were, was very, very rewarding for me and winning a Champions Trophy and having some success along the way was excellent.

What were the challenges going into that Pakistan job now you've had time to reflect on that?

The challenges were cultural. And I realised, the one big thing I took out of being sacked by Australia was understanding that I didn't sit back and have a look at the culture enough. I just thought that this culture would be exactly the same and I'd coach in exactly the same way as I coached South Africa. That was a mistake from my point of view. Look, it was a tough time to coach Australia, there was so much going on behind the scenes at that point. It was tough. But I feel I should have sat back a little bit, observed and then started making changes and the decisions I wanted to, but instead I went in headfirst without kind of understanding the environment I was walking into.

So, I made sure when I got to Pakistan, that I fully had a look and understood the environment and understood what we were working with. Also, within a totally different culture. Getting to understand the Muslim culture, getting to understand the beliefs was really important for me because that helped me in the way I spoke to and coached players. So, it was fascinating. It was really, really rewarding. I loved every minute of that job. Similarly, then going on to Sri Lanka was exactly the same, where I sat back and observed it.

Sri Lanka, beautiful country, very, very nice people, predominantly Buddhist. Within the team we had predominantly Buddhists, but we had a lot of Christians as well. It's an island that has a lot of Muslims. You've got to understand the Tamil, sort of Sinhalese divide if you like, understand a little bit about the civil war that they've been through. So, it helps, again, shape your conversations. I think, as a coach, you've actually got to immerse yourself in those cultures, to actually understand how you can get the best out of those players. And it's amazing, you immerse yourself in those cultures, the respect you get back from the players, because you've taken the time out to understand them and understand their culture makes it far easier to take them on their cricket journey. So, those are the things that I've learned along the way.

How has the game changed since you started coaching domestically in South Africa? What aspects of the game excite you and what are the challenges you think confront the game at the moment?

I think there are numerous challenges for the world game at the moment. The schedule is tough. I do worry about the advent of franchise leagues. I'm going to make a little bit of money in them. But I do worry about their impact on international cricket. When I started, certainly international cricket was the be-all and end-all of world cricket, if you like. I started with South Africa before the IPL. So, international cricket was the holy grail if you like, very well supported and a lot of drive and ambition for players to play that. With the advent of the IPL, the franchise tournaments down the line, has dissolved that just a little bit with players now choosing to go to white ball, etc.

The one thing I've cautioned all the players that I've worked with on that - because they see easy money in the franchise events - is they've got to understand that you need a shop window. The shop window for the high-profile players is international cricket. You play well in international cricket; every franchise wants you because your currency is good. You don't play well; your currency isn't good anymore. In which case the world of franchise cricket is a tough, tough world, simply because if you get into one competition and don't perform, the owners don't have you back the following year, which then affects everything else along the line. So, you still need the stability of international cricket. For the guys not playing international cricket, you need the stability of first class, county cricket if you like, because you need a support structure.

So many players have said, 'I'm just going to take it on, I'm going to become this renegade franchise cricketer.' Well suddenly, you haven't got a fitness trainer, you haven't got a coach, you haven't got a bowling coach, batting coach, fielding coach, you haven't got a physio, you haven't got a structure. And then you've got to go and find that and do that on your own. You haven't got a facility. To go and find all that and then to be able to perform at your peak, there's no longevity in that. So, I really caution every player, they still need a shop window, be that shop window county cricket, first-class cricket, domestic cricket anywhere around the world or international cricket. You still have to have that, and I still like to think - and I think it's fairly consistent with most players that I've spoken to - that playing in a World Cup and playing for their country still almost takes precedent over being this renegade franchise cricketer.

We've seen some high-profile examples recently with Somerset's Will Smeed signing a white ball only contract at 21, whereas Kent's Sam Billings has decided not to play the IPL in 2023, but to concentrate on Championship cricket to try to retain his England Test place. What would you say to a young player at Derbyshire facing a similar decision?

Well, I think it all depends on the talent of the player. Will Smeed is a very talented cricketer, but at 21 he hasn't done anything yet, apart from playing the odd innings and the odd innings fairly inconsistently if we have to be brutally honest. Yeah, he'll get 100 and then you won't see him for five innings. So, what I say is, you still need the support structure, you still need to... and I've followed Will Smeed and he seems to be doing it for very much the right reasons. He's still very driven, he still wants to play all his white ball cricket in Somerset, he's still going to have the support structure. So, he gets a lot of ticks in that regard. He might have realised that for him, that's where his future lies, which is good. I think he's done that very maturely.

But I still like to see the player that still gets stuck in and tries to play red ball because I think good red ball cricketers, it certainly helps you become a better white ball player. You know, you obviously get the exceptions to the rule, but it certainly gives you a base to be that. I was really interested in the Sam Billings decision, and I applauded that decision. I thought that was outstanding. He clearly wants to challenge Ben Foakes for the wicketkeeping gloves, which is great. I think it's good for Ben, I think it's good for the England system that you have that. He clearly sees with an Ashes tour coming into England that there's likelihood of some opportunity. So, him getting back and wanting to do it in county cricket is brilliant. I really applauded that.

On a higher-profile note, I really enjoyed