English Cricket instructor hails ZC

Sports Reporter

ENGLISH Cricket instructors, who were recently in the country for the Level Two cricket course, have hailed the local cricket motherboard (ZC) for facilitating a “After cricket course” for players in the twilight of their careers.

After conducting a six-day day Level Two cricket coach, which saw 24 local coaches participating, the duo of English Cricket instructors Tim Dellor and Phil Relf held a two day “After Cricket Course” which focused on opportunities for players to pursue after their playing careers.

Dellor, who was the head instructor of the coaching course, hailed the Zimbabwe Cricket for facilitating a course that seeks to help player in the twilight of their playing careers to cope with life after cricket.

“You look at the statistics of sports people they particularly suffer from high level depression, bankruptcy, addictions, divorce in worst case suicide around the time of retirement.

“And thus all sport bodies need to be aware of and take some responsibilities in preventing, Zimbabwe Cricket deserves massive credit for facilitating such a course that helps in capacitating players in a quite challenging time of life, retirement which I prefer to call career change.

“I am really impressed by what Zimbabwe Cricket has done, the compassionate and foresight to try and help these guys through what is quite a challenging time in their careers,” said Dellor.

Among the participants of the recently held After Cricket course were, national team captain, Craig Ervine, Tendai Chatara, Timcyn Maruma Sean Williams.

Dellor revealed that during the course they had touched on a financial issue, a module which was well received by the participants.

“We did a module on budgeting financial management and planning finances which the guys really appreciated and found useful,” said Dellor.

With sports people associated with big pay cheques in their active years, which usually take a drastic change when they retire, Dellor feels the need by sport associations to put in place courses to prepare athletes for life after sports.

“ZC deserves massive credit for facilitating such a course because many countries and sporting bodies have no foresight on putting courses to that will look after their athletes when they finish playing sport at the highest level,” he said.

The English Cricket instructor revealed that sport people possess skills which could be useful in their next careers after active sports.

“We need to help these players who are finishing playing sport fulltime and make them understand the transition and them feel positive about it.

“What I have realised is that the players have some skills that they possess which is not about catching, fielding, batting but I am talking about the leadership, discipline, organizational skills, teamwork so if you are an employer you will do well in employing an ex-professional sport player as they are high calibre individuals,” said Dellor.