Chevrons get mental coach

AS PART of efforts to end the national men’s cricket team’s poor form, Zimbabwe Cricket has hired a mental coach.

South African Christo Spies began working with both the Chevrons and Zimbabwe A last week and he says he has already noticed some changes in the way the lads are going about their business.

“They are all willing to learn and grow. I have seen there is new energy, there is joy and that’s part of the mental part we focus on.

They are very keen, some of them have said they are applying what they are learning and it’s working,” he said.

Zimbabwean teams have failed to handle pressure situations on sev-

contract negotiations before the money could to be disbursed to the provinces.

Fortunately, as far as these issues go we have ironed out everything and now we can look to 2017 with optimism.

The key things to know about our operations, this year, is that everything we do from this point onwards will be directed towards our preparations for next year’s ICC Cricket World Cup qualifiers.

An action plan has been put in place, eral occasions in recent years.

During the 2015 ICC Cricket World Cup, Zimbabwe had South Africa reeling at 83-4 after 20 overs but somehow allowed the Proteas to find a way back into the game and post a 339-run total.

The Chevrons fell five runs short in their chase of Ireland’s 331 at the same World Cup, and recently against Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe crumbled under pressure.

Spies said, “The example I always use is if you think how many times you got yourself out and how many times the bowler gets you out; many times it’s all about your head running all over the place.

with the view of preparing our national teams for the World Cups or World Cup qualifiers.

There will also be a bias towards One-Day-Internationals, as the qualifiers and the World Cup itself, in 2019, are our main priority.

We held crunch talks with Cricket South Africa, last weekend, and hope to improve relations between our two nations. The aim of this renewed relationship with CSA is to learn as much as

If you can control the head space your game will improve. My idea is to hold the players accountable to their thinking processes.

“Each one has to focus on their own skills and together they is enough skill here.

There are good youngsters coming up from the A side and the U19s, if they keep coming through and put pressure on the guys in the national side in 2019 for the World Cup we will have a winning Zimbabwe team.”

Spies is a motivational speaker and works with the Free State Eagles cricket and Free State Cheetahs rugby teams.

we can from our South African counterparts.

To learn both from a governance point of view and also from a playing perspective, and hopefully improve the way we play the game and govern the sport. This year should be a good one for us. Zimbabwe Cricket chair Tavengwa Mukuhlani was speaking to The Sunday Mail Sport’s Tinashe Kusema over the phone on January 25, 2017