Online Reporter
Brandon Moyo, Zimpapers Sports Hub
IN a bid to nurture the next generation of cricketers in the city, Tuskers held a boys and girls’ Under-13 training camp at Bulawayo Athletic Club (BAC) which started on Tuesday.
The camp was part of Tuskers’ age group development pathway which is meant to provide a structured system for identifying, developing and preparing young cricketers for higher levels of the game.
The programme focuses on player development through building strong technical foundations, tactical awareness, physical conditioning and character, ensuring that players move progressively from grassroots participation to elite provincial and professional cricket.
Speaking during the camp, Tuskers’ development officer, Farai “Slim” Gunda said they had a good turnout for the camp which ran throughout the week.
“We have been having an Under-13 boys and girls’ cricket camp, it started on Tuesday, soon after Easter, running all the way up to Friday. The camp is for us to nurture our Under-13s. We noticed that we need to start digging a bit more into our grassroots.
“All the schools were invited but unfortunately some could not make it due to other commitments but we had a good turnout in terms of participation,” said Gunda.
He added that they worked closely with schools in identifying children to participate in the camp, which he described as more of a high performance programme.
“These are kids who mainly play for the first teams in their respective schools and we also spoke to their school coaches as well as some of our development coaches who are involved in those schools to give us the players that they feel will benefit more in this camp. It’s more like a high performance camp, not where you are teaching a kid the starting of cricket. It’s a kid who has a certain knowledge of how to play cricket so we are just putting in a bit more intensity, and knowledge,” he said.
Gunda said the programme was based on improving each child and also trying to integrate them into club age groups with the National Premier League (NPL) age group competition coming up.
“These kids will also be integrated into the top two clubs which is Queens and Amakhosi to participate in the junior age groups NPL starting in a couple of weeks. The key thing for us is to maintain the consistency and continuity with them. When they leave here, they are going into the Under-14 stage of which we are having an Under-14 and 15 camp starting next week.
“So it’s now all about continuity and keeping the boys and girls within the system so as to always have that feeding pipeline going all the way up to the Under-19 provincial side as well as the men’s and ladies’ sides,” said Gunda.
Having finished their basics with the coaches on Friday, yesterday, the players had a centre wicket practice with both groups playing 20-over games as means to measure their progress.
derick.khumalo