Saturday, February 8, 2025

Cricket training attracts international pro

It all started with watching her father play cricket in his club. At 17 her cricket career took off when she was picked to play for the national team. For Lydia Greenway, cricket is everything. This explains why she came all the way from Britain for a two day training program with the Botswana ladies team.

Following her retirement last year after playing for England for 13 years, the left handed batter’s wish is to see girl children involved in the sports and growing.

Lydia said she had set up a company in England called “Cricket for Girls”.

“We offer coaching specifically to females of all ages, all abilities, and the reason why I am here is to mobilize a few projects which will give these ladies an opportunity as well as uproot talented young people.” The projects help professionalize ladies team in their games as well as motivating them.

The two day training program helps in developing and equipping players with improved skill and match awareness in a challenging but enjoyable manner. Lydia said,” We want to facilitate as much learning as possible and build a brilliant team culture”.

The training program entails fielding circuit, technical development rotations, and tactical development and skill rotations for the ladies, to enrich their knowledge of the game. She further said the first thing was to give them a positive experience from chatting to a lot of local people and to other English coaches, and to see where their talent lie, giving them life skills whilst enjoying what they are doing.

She said the biggest highlight of her career was England winning the women’s world cup in 2009 against their rivals Australia which was the toughest team at the time. “We won the ashes and I contributed to that, and am happy with my experiences and achievements so far. The pressures that we get from the nation, media and crowds at times got to our nerves but we did well,” she added.

Speaking of striking a balance between her professional and personal life she said now that she had retired from professional cricket, she turning to running her business with a spirit filled passion. “It was probably hard when I was still at the grounds because we would either be on camp or at travelling all over the place, having less time to spend with my family. But, I mean I survived the pressures, and now am back to giving them full attention,” she added.

Lydia said if she had not been a cricketer she would have opted for Physical Education teacher, which in a way is related to keeping fit and maintaining that fitness level, as well as imparting physical knowledge on talented individual’s sports wise.

She concluded by saying that they started off facing problems similar to those experienced by Botswana and that she was hopeful that in years to come the sport will be known countrywide.

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