Zimbabwe steps up women's cricket development

Zimbabwe Cricket plans to boost the profile of women's cricket in the country with its inter-franchise U13 cricket and open-age girls' tournaments which will be held in Mutare in April 2010. The tournaments will provide a platform for the board to select players and build a selection of future international players.

Women's Cricket Coordinator Caroline Nyamande said in an interview with Sportingo: "This year is going to be different, instead of selecting provincial squads we are focused on identifying additional talent to the team which we already have. This is being done to strengthen the current team and to ensure that the players continue to function as a unit as well as to attach players we might have over looked in the past."

"We would like to host these tournaments in all our national regions. The open-age group is an annual tournament held every April and was previously held in Bulawayo, Kwekwe, and Harare; this year we will hold it in Mutare," she said.

The U13 inter-franchise tournament, a first-of-its-kind in Zimbabwe, will help in the development of higher age-group teams like the successful U19 girls that was invited to an annual South African tourney in 2009, where it won all its matches.

"Previously, we used to start girls' cricket development from older age groups. This year we are going to invert the pyramid and start with younger age groups beginning with the U13 girls. It is a four-year plan aimed at feeding into the U19 and national teams four years from now," she added.