Jason Gillespie: Yorkshire have been great but my family had to come first

When my family went back to Australia about four weeks ago, I started to think then that I wouldn’t be able to return as coach of Yorkshire next year.

The original plan had been for me to join my wife, Anna, and our four children in Adelaide at the end of the domestic season. I have a contract to coach the Adelaide Strikers in the Big Bash Twenty20 competition and after that we would return to Leeds for the county campaign.

But it became quite clear that this was not going to happen. The kids were pretty excited about going to Australia — and not necessarily coming back. It started to sink in that if we were heading back to Australia again for the winter, we didn’t perhaps want to uproot the whole family again and bring them back to England.

So at that point it came down to whether I could be in England on my own for about seven months — taking in pre-season and then the domestic competitions with Yorkshire. The plan would have been to go to Australia and visit the family during occasional breaks in the schedule.

I even looked at options for renting a one-bedroom flat in Leeds. But then, once Anna and the kids went back to Australia last month, it dawned on me after four or five days what life would be like.

The realisation struck me that for the vast majority of next summer, I would be living without my family. That is when it became clear to me that it wasn’t going to work and that it would be time to leave Yorkshire.

Yorkshire have always been fantastic to me and my priority was always to do the right thing by them. I have had five great seasons here and I hope we can now win our third consecutive County Championship title.

Jason Gillespie’s column is sponsored by Liberty Specialty Markets. For further information visit libertyspecialtymarkets.com/libertysponsorship