The future is bright – Namibia women’s cricket coach
Future bright for Namibia women’s cricket
JOHANNESBURG, June 23 (ANA) – Following their impressive performance in the Kwibuka T20 women’s cricket tournament which included a run to the final last week, in Kigali, Rwanda, Namibia coach Francois van der Merwe is optimistic about the future of the sport in the Southern African nation.
Namibia lost in the final to Kenya.
Van der Merwe said: “The whole experience was a big learning curve and we haven’t played international cricket for the last 18 months, so to go back into a competitive tournament like this was really good and as a coach I’m really happy where we are with our skill levels. Unfortunately it’s just those big matches that we have to pull off when we get into the finals again.
Overall, Van der Merwe said he was satisfied.
“There are very good youngsters coming through the system as well and we just have to focus a bit more on our batting because we want to get that aspect of our game much stronger. But we’ve got a lot of good youngsters coming through, so the future is very bright for Namibian women’s cricket.”
Namibia captain Irene van Zyl echoed the sentiments of her coach.
Van Zyl said: “We’re pretty happy with our performance at the Kwibuka tournament. I felt we played good cricket overall and everyone made strides during this tournament.
“We were working on our processes, so it’s all a learning curve for everyone, and having a new coach, things don’t just happen overnight, so I’m pretty happy and content with what we achieved.”
Though the final did not go according to plan for Namibia, Van Zyl said there was cause for optimism.
“Obviously on the last day things didn’t go our way, I think Kenya was just more focussed and clinical on the day, but we will not let that hold us back.
“We will come back stronger, we will go back to the drawing board and work on our processes again and take it from there.” – African News Agency (ANA), Editing by Michael Sherman