Arnold Manders, the new Bermuda Cricket Board president, recognises the importance of qualifications in coaching, as a high performance coach himself, and as such wants to see better qualified coaches at local clubs.

The board recently announced a partnership with online cricket coaching programme, CoachEd, which is run by Gary Kirsten, the former South Africa batsman who played 101 Tests and 185 one-day internationals for his country before retiring in 2004.

The course is an 11-module course designed to cover all aspects of cricket, including season management and player performance management. Tomorrow, starting at 11am., the BCB will hold a Zoom meeting for local coaches interested in taking part in the upcoming coaching course to outline the programme.

Manders, who coached Bermuda Under-19 beforeo winning the presidency at last month’s annual meeting, has a vision to improve the quality of cricket on the island through better coaching.

“It’s an accreditation and elite course, and most of our coaches are level 2 and they did it a long time ago,” Manders said. “They should try to upgrade so that they can improve cricket in the clubs which would make it better for the players when they move into the senior [national] team.

“That’s the problem, when they move from the clubs it’s too big a jump to the international arena; they’re not as good as they think they are.

“The coaches are not given the right information, as well, so we try to make sure that what we do in high performance is going to be shared with all the club coaches. But we need to get them qualified first.”

Manders added: “It’s run by Gary Kirsten, one of the top coaches in the world, and he has his own high performance academy. It’s an online course because they are not going to do any coaching courses with Covid-19.

“They get all the information, study, take the test and then we’ll do some practical work from here recommended by them. There are two programmes, an accredited one which is like level 2, and the other is elite which will be high performance.”

Manders says tomorrow’s webinar session at 11am is open to anyone who is interested in coaching. “They’ll come on and explain the programme. Anybody, including females, who want to coach or just to watch and listen can come,” he said.

“It’s an educational process and we’re trying to get one person from each club, two or three is even better. We want people who want to coach cricket.

“The more coaches we’ve got, the less strain on everybody, and the more knowledgeable we get the more cricket will improve.

“And the ones who have level 2, they should be trying to upgrade every three, four years, because the information they have has been changed.”

He added: “We have a few coaches who coach clubs who don’t have a coaching degree. They may be former players but they’ve never been in a coaching programme.”

For more information on tomorrow’s Zoom meeting, which will outline the programme to interested participants, email the BCB at info@cricket.bm or call 292-8958.