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Brad
Zeller, Australian Women's Coach
Indoor Cricket
World's exclusive interview with Brad Zeller, the Australian Women's
Indoor Cricket Team's coach, continues.
PART 4.
Indoor
Cricket World: Other than your duties as Australian
Coach and the coming World Cup, is there anything else in the
world of indoor cricket that really excites you?
Brad Zeller:
As we've discussed before, I'm still very enthusiastic about
the promotion of women in the sport, especially the youngsters.
Indoor
Cricket World: And you are actively involved in this?
Brad Zeller:
Definitely. We
have numerous schools that use our facility and what I do is identify
players that I believe show promise, but more to the point, the
ones that are the keenest. It is not hard to identify them. I
then invite them to practise on a Friday afternoon ( every 3rd
week) for free with me. At the moment there are 7 girls that take
advantage of this.
This all started when a couple of the Mums brought their daughters
in to play and they found they loved it and stayed, so I started
coaching them. From there I try to introduce the new girls into
our mixed or ladies competitions.
Another idea I am trialling is to set up a competition on a Sunday
afternoon for school teams. At the moment the girls play in a
structured school competition every Wednesday afternoon. I see
it as an extension from there. The way I go about this is to write
to the schools, inform them as to what I am trying to achieve,
and go from there. I explain the process from playing in-house,
playing for your club, zone etc. There are also development squads
for young women in Queensland, set up by our development officer
Tahnee Norris.
ICW:
We're
interested in getting regular reports on your progress on all
that, so we can keep our readers informed.
BZ: Not
a problem.
ICW:
Okay Brad, now we're going to put you on the spot. Give us your
thoughts on the coming World Cup.
BZ: The
"World Cup", well what do i think?
Firstly, I think the AICF has shown great initiative in holding
a workshop recently for coaches, managers sport trainers and officials.
Some great ideas come out of that not only for the World Cup but
for the next couple of years. I would like to elaborate but some
finer details are still being worked through and some of it is
designed to be announced on the night of the Open Nationals presentation
dinner. Suffice to say that if the players are accepting of their
responsibilities and the honour of playing for their country then
Australia will benefit.
So far as
Australia's chances go, well I am quietly confident that the Women
will be hard to beat. Mind you I am nowhere near over-confident
because I could see bigger things for the Kiwi's last year, but
beating Australia was not in the equation.
The Aussie team last year was a fantastic group of women that
got on famously, were competitive against each other, trained
hard and played harder. I learnt from that trip as well and have
come up with a few different ideas for this year.
New Zealand
will be a great place to have the World Cup and I have enjoyed
each trip there. The venue is fantastic and the way Mark Cini
has described his plans for the cup it sounds like it will be
another great trip.
All eyes will
be focused on the men I suppose, especially after their trip last
year where they dropped a couple of warm-up games in New Zealand
and a Test in Sri Lanka. As with the women, the make-up of the
team will be important and we will not know that until the week
of the Nationals. The men realise that they need to work even
harder to keep the "wolves at bay" so to speak, and I am sure
they will be up to the task. I know their coach (Ross Gregory)
and I'm pretty sure that discipline will not be a problem. Ross
is more than aware of the pressure on Australia and I am positive
he will not leave any stone unturned in his quest for his team's
glory.
ICW: Indoor Cricket World may also be at and
reporting directly from the World Cup in New Zealand, if sponsorship
is found to allay the costs.... more on that at a later date.
In the meantime, we'd like to sincerely thank Brad Zeller for
his participation in this series of interviews. And we'd also
like to promise readers that this is not the last you have seen
from Brad on these pages . . . again, more on that at a later
date too.
Brad
Zeller Interview Part
1 | Part 2
| Part 3 | Part
4
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