Blessing Malinganiza
LADY Chevrons coach, Walter Chawaguta, is in a race against time to fix the team’s batting and fielding problems ahead of the ICC T20 World Cup Global qualifiers.
The ICC Women’s T20 World Cup qualification tournament roars into life in the United Arab Emirates on Thursday.
The Lady Chevrons begin their battle, for one of the two World Cup slots, with a date against Vanuatu on Thursday.
And, after watching his side beat the USA by six wickets in a warm-up match on Sunday, Chawaguta is concerned with the team’s batting and fielding department.
“I am happy with where we are as a team but we have got some issues to work on.
“We have been talking to the players about self-expression when they bat and it is good to see that it is starting to register but we are not quite where we want to be.
“We also still have issues to sort out with our fielding,” he said. Zimbabwe play their last warm-up match today against Scotland.
Chawaguta was part of the technical team which missed out on qualification of the last edition of the T20 World Cup with a four-run defeat against Ireland in a semi-final clash at the same tournament two years ago.
“It is something that you cannot avoid, you are always going to have that at the back of your mind but that is one thing that I have not been talking about with the players.
“It is something I think about as a coach but it is not something worth speaking about as a team.
“Past is past, we made our mistakes, we can learn from that once we start the tournament and we want to make sure we won’t drop a match.
“Our main target is to be first in our group and get ourselves in the semi-finals and worry about what comes after that,” said Chawaguta.
He added that the team has remained in high spirits despite floods hitting the host country upon their arrival early last week.
“We missed the first day and the second day (of training)… we would have wanted to have a net session, unfortunately the conditions did not allow that but we still had a good fielding session and I can’t say we missed much.”