Junior cricket set to bowl Bindura over

The tournament will be held at Bindura Country Club from Monday to Friday.
It will feature three teams from around the Mashonaland Eagles catchment area (Harare Metropolitan and Mashonaland Central Provinces) and a squad from an elite Zambian Cricket Academy.
This event is part of development programmes for cricket.
The purpose of this tournament is to continue the development of the talent of junior players at franchise level. Players move from the BancABC Under-13 age-group and fight for places in the Under-14 and 15 age groups at franchise level.
Tournament organisers said that their ultimate goal was to increase the player base of the age groups at Mash Eagles.
Zimbabwe has just returned to Test cricket and a huge player base is required for the sustenance of the format and the launch of the franchise system in 2009 was specifically designed for that.
Franchise development officer in charge of Mashonaland Central, Francis Rashikayi, said: “Bindura has a strong cricket community and playing there helps in decentralising cricket from Harare.
It already has a strong cricket culture and hopefully hosting this tournament is the beginning of greater things to come for the area.”
Not all of the beneficiaries of Zimbabwe Cricket’s development programmes become professional cricketers, some venture into coaching and have been assigned in foreign countries.
One such example is Ishmael Mbatata, a former Churchill High school pupil who is now the coach for the visiting Zambian squad.
Mbatata is also a product of Mashonaland Central and just like Norbert Manyande (who now plays and coaches the Namibian Desert Vipers) are products of Zimbabwe Cricket’s scholarship programme.
The teams
Bald Eagle (Mabvuku and Chitungwiza); Golden eagle (Bindura and Shamva); Harp Eagle (High Glen) and Alpha Cricket Academy (Zambian team).