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Brandon Moyo, Sports Reporter
ZIMBABWE national women’s cricket team head coach, Gary Brent has been involved in an initiative of developing women’s cricket across the country.

Brent has been training with players in different cities in partnership with provincial coaches, with the initiative being part of efforts to ensure there is a coordinated effort in developing players and training of contracted national team players.

With morale down after missing out on World Cup qualification, Brent said he decided to go around the country and help girls practice in their provinces so that they have effective sessions.

“I just felt that after us not qualifying for the World Cup, everybody is a little bit down from that so it was just to go around the country, see the girls practising in their provinces and to help them with that so they could have really effective practices and help them with some drills,” said Brent.

With a lot of talent out there, Brent believes it is a golden age of women’s cricket and such resourcefulness is a way of trying to put in place structures that will help widen the pool for women’s cricket.

Gary Brent participating in a practice session with women cricketers

“We are in a golden age of women’s cricket at the moment and it’s going to get better over the next two or three years so it’s just making sure we can try and put in place some structures for women’s cricket because there is a lot of talent out there.

“We just want to make sure that the bottom of the pyramid is as large as we can make it, trying to get cricket into schools for girls. We are just going to start with just encouraging schools to allow girls to play on the boys’ team whether it’s the B team or the C team or even the A teams,” said Brent.

Gary Brent at his nationwide initiative

Having girls in schools playing in teams and under coaches that are already there will help schools cut down on costs. With a bit of traction coming, the game will become more popular thus leading to inter-school women’s cricket which Brent described as “a dream come true”.
Brent, who has so far been to Mutare, Bulawayo and Kwekwe with the initiative said they are trying to spread the net and get as many women cricketers as they can. He is also looking at going to Masvingo   shortly.

He added that he wishes to see girls’ cricket have as many facilities as the men’s side so they can up-skill themselves. The responses to the visited cities have been good and have not only been coming from national contracted players.

Brent said he hopes the initiative will be bi-annually or even tri-annually. – @brandon_malvin