Life Outside Cricket: George Bailey

Our Life Outside Cricket podcast series with The Grade Cricketer continues with Episode #3 with George Bailey.

George represented Australia across all three formats of the game before moving into a role as a National Selector of the Australian men's team.

Some of the highlights of the podcast are below or you can listen to the full episode here.

What is it you pursue outside of the game?

I've completed an MBA through the University of Tasmania, on the back of getting to a point in my career where I thought I better start having one eye on what will happen post my playing career.

I looked at a few different study options and without having a grand plan of where I would go, an MBA looked as though it would give me a taste of a few different areas for me to then narrow down my search.

The flexibility with university has changed significantly throughout George's career...

The first couple of years in Hobart early in my cricket career were really difficult, balancing it with uni particularly in second semester. I was deferring exams and then trying to defer deferred exams.

Obviously things have now improved for state cricketers and the ACA are really good at making sure players are doing something outside of cricket but it's important to make the point that uni isn't for everybody too.

Nowadays you can essentially pick and choose the make-up of your uni course and how you complete it which is really good and interesting for a lot of athletes.

George's scope for business opportunities has widened through completing his MBA...

My openness to looking at other areas of society for where business opportunities might lie has been great.

Tim Paine, Nick Riewoldt and I have just bought the franchise rights to 'Body Fit Training' in Tasmania and everything that's been involved with that in terms of studio space and hiring of staff has been fascinating and the skills that I need for that I wouldn't have had without university, or if I did, I didn't know how to formally put them into use.

George's advice for other transitioning athletes...

I think you get told a lot that the skills you pick up in a professional sporting environment are very transferrable to business, which I agree with but it didn't make me feel anymore comfortable when the transition comes.

The fact you're starting something new and if you've had a lengthy career you're either near the top of the tree domestically or internationally and wherever you go outside of the game next, you're starting down the bottom again and you have to get used to that feeling of being a rookie again, being comfortable with that and much like the day of your first training session, you have a growth mindset and wanted to learn from the best players around you, that's basically the approach you have to take now.