ZIMBABWE Cricket (ZC) has officially announced that Dav Whatmore has signed a new four-year contract to coach the national team, but it could be end of the road for batting coach Andy Waller.
BY KEVIN MAPASURE
Waller coached the national team for one year before he was removed in favour of Steve Mangongo whose stint was even shorter before Whatmore was asked to preside over the team at the 2015 ICC World Cup.
Whatmore invited Waller to take up the batting coach position for the global showcase, but that relationship seems to have come to an abrupt end with a new batting coach set to come in.
Waller’s contract with ZC has expired and it is unlikely to be renewed with Wayne James and Trevor Gripper among those touted to take up the batting coach position. Douglas Hondo is likely to continue in his role as bowling coach.
At a media conference in Harare yesterday, ZC declined to reveal the names of the assistant coaches despite announcing the new deal with Whatmore.
Managing director Cricket Affairs, Alistair Campbell said that the process of coming up with the assistants had not been completed even though Whatmore had already picked the people he preferred to work with.
“You guys will have to be patient we have contracts expiring some will be renewed some may not, but the coach has already identified the people he prefers to work with,” said Campbell.
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ZC board chairman Wilson Manase said that the coach had been given the mandate to pick the assistants and those are the people the board would appoint.
“We are happy that we signed a new deal with such an experienced coach, so we have given him the freedom to choose the people he prefers to work with. We have started the road towards qualifying for the 2019 World Cup and we are confident we have the best technical team for that job.”
ZC announced that Zimbabwe have a busy limited overs schedule this year which will see matches against Pakistan away, India, New Zealand, Pakistan, Ireland and West Indies all at home before the end of year tour to Bangladesh which will include Test matches.
Manase said the busy programme would help the team bridge the gap, in terms of number of matches played, with other top nations. “Before we went to the World Cup our team had played just 49 ODIs and comparing with other Test nations the team that had the least number of matches was Bangladesh with 120. We had played less than half of that so we are trying to play as many matches so that the team benefits from that.”
