INDIA DRILLS LOCAL CRICKET COACHES
In their endeavor to develop cricket in the country, Botswana Cricket Association (BCA) struck a partnership with Karnataka State Cricket Association (KSCA) from India, to initiate change and innovation, with a view to induce better performance and progress.
The BCA board has intrinsically reviewed the image of the organization, and taken steps to optimize the output, both on and off the field. Following the tour by the BCA Women’s team (The Herons), in November 2023, to Bengaluru at the invitation of KSCA, the hosts from back then are now the visitors to Botswana with key strategic development plans on the pipeline for the local game.
A technical team comprising of three (3) experts arrived in Gaborone on the 14th of March and departed on the 31st on an expedition to impart their expertise for the betterment of cricket in Botswana. The team include Rajesh Kamath (Head Coach of KSCA), Mukunda Galappa (Senior Coach of KSCA), and Mr Kiran Kudtarkar (Analyst at KSCA). With their main objectives targeting empowering the BCA coaching staff, development team and a few hand-picked support coaches, the trio have already drilled the national teams and now the last step of their mission is to take some local coaching through some coaching clinic sessions. “We will help them understand better how to coach in a more structured way, organization and the way they are supposed to coach, how to
communicate with the players, education around coaching in our last remaining days. We will return in the future and train them again at a much higher level, we can’t give them all the information at once, we are working on the foundation we need to get it right from the foundation level,” Mukunda Galappa told Sun Sport. According to the BCA, the KSCA team are expected to closely work with local coaches around an intense programme encompassing theoretical and practical components of the game, which will continue even after their return, through digital platforms. “Technology enables us to give players a proper feedback on what they are good at, and where they need to improve, we will continue to monitor the players even when in India and give them feedback,” Mukunda added when highlighting the importance of technology in the cricket game. The BCA national coach, Stanley
Timoni, who has been working closely with the KSCA added that the visitors have helped them to instill the cricket culture and ethical conduct to the players which they believe will culminate in positive results.
“What they have done is add a bit of spice to our game, we have been lacking cricket culture and good work ethic. Since their arrival here, the players have been coming through, they have been taught how to look after themselves, personal and team goals something and this has added flavor to the teams,” he said.
“Continuity is very key, we need it, before they [KSCA delegation] came through we have been working on our LTAD [Long Term Athlete Development plans} which entails our short and long term development goals. All the information we have received we need to utilize it, we need to monitor the players and look for precompetition matches to see how the progress of our teams is going. Since I arrived here I realized that we don’t have feeder groups to our national teams, there is a huge gap. That is why we are working hard on our grassroots development to create a structure that provides a good pathway all the way up to the senior national teams— KSCA coaches have really helped on how we can best develop this development structure,” Timoni highlighted. The training sessions for the national teams covered: senior Men, Women teams and U-19 Girls, with emphasis on the T20 format, the U-19 Boys played 50 Overs as these are in sync with the formats that each of these teams would participate in, during the ICC pathway events.