Tuskers take on Falcon College

Ricky Zililo Sports Reporter
LOGAN Cup champions Matabeleland Tuskers Cricket Franchise will begin their preparations for the new season with a training match against Falcon College at Esigodini tomorrow.Matabeleland Tuskers Cricket Franchise were forced to postpone their first training session of the season last Tuesday with their coach Wayne James saying he was waiting for Zimbabwe Cricket to release calendar dates for the competitions.

James had argued that it did not make sense to start training when they do not know the season’s kick off date. A former Zimbabwe national fringe player, James who took over the reigns at Matabeleland Tuskers from Heath Streak said he engaged the latter for a possible game with Falcon College.

Streak runs his cricket academy which is temporarily based at Falcon College.
“We are going to have our Matabeleland Tuskers team taking on Falcon College’s first team on Sunday and that will give me a clearer picture as to the state of the players. We haven’t decided with Streak as to what format we are going to use but I think the Falcon Boys will be happy to take on these professional cricketers,” James said.

The Matabeleland Tuskers gaffer is confident that his players are fit because some of them were busy during the off-season.
Goodwill Mamhiyo and Keith Dabengwa played winter cricket in England.

Matabeleland Tuskers’ captain Sean Williams was with the national team playing against India and Pakistan while promising opening batsman Brian Chari spent the better part of the off-season at the Zimbabwe Cricket Academy in Harare.

The Bulawayo based team which has won three consecutive premier first class cricket titles are now scheduled to start their pre-season training on Tuesday.

“Our first training session didn’t materialise. We ended up having a meeting with the players. Everyone is ready to train but we had to postpone until my return from Harare where I met the ZC general manager on Wednesday and he said they are looking at the league starting on 1 November.

“Nothing official has been sent to the franchises and no funds have been released yet. What I have done is to give the ground staff some of my personal money so that they get the facilities ready because I want us to start training on Tuesday so that in the event that ZC releases funds and officially announce the start of the season we are not caught off guard,” said James.