AfricaPress-Tanzania: TANZANIA Cricket Association (TCA) is now expanding its wings to introduce the sport in various parts of the country in a bid to enhance its grassroots level project.
The idea behind is to groom more young talents and expose them into competitive events for their successful future career, TCA’s information officer, Atif Salim said that after organising several junior events in various parts like Chanika, on the outskirts of Dar es Salaam, Morogoro and other places while Kigamboni in the city is now a new focus.
“We have opened a new centre at Kigamboni district in Dar es Salaam recently for cricket beginners,” said Salim.
The young cricket generation will be groomed and promoted into junior national teams in both girls and boys disciplines.
“We need to have strong junior national teams that will in the long run replace our current senior national team players when they retire,” said Salim.
He said that TCA mission is to make sure that the sport is highly promoted at junior levels by scouting young talented players, especially from primary schools.
“What we do is to encourage Primary School teachers to become cricket coaches for them to train their respective pupils at schools. “The Primary School teachers are taught all basics and developed further into coaching training,’ he said.
To start with, he said TCA organized a coaching course for 15 primary school teachers in Kigamboni District. After the training was over, Cricket gear for the juniors were handed over to each school to begin the program.
The schools will later be involved into so-called ‘Chanzo tournament’ that basically involves cricket beginners. Mwanaidi Shakim, a senior women national team player of all time and Hemedi Yahya, both development officers from TCA will be in-charge of the new centre.
The centre is another milestone for the association in its efforts to expand the game around the country and finally have a centre established across the ferry.
TCA had such centres in various parts of the country like Chamwino in Dodoma, Geita and Gairo district in Morogoro.
The centres are being supervised by development officers, some of whom have played cricket for decades and represented the country in various international ICC regional tournaments.
