Photo Credit: Oman Cricket
Oman Cricket (OC) has been constantly working hard to ensure that the domestic coaches, young cricketers and beginners are provided top-class facilities to learn, train and improve their skills sets.
As part of OC’s continued efforts, the recent maiden partnership initiative with South Africa’s Gary Kirsten Cricket (GKC) Academy turned out to be a grand success.
A total of 75 players attended the five-day coaching camp that catered to grassroots players, high-performance cricketers and domestic coaches.
Evert Laubscher, Oman Cricket Academy manager, said that a total of 21 cricketers, including three Omani nationals and a girl, took part in the grassroots camp, conducted by two coaches from the GKC Academy – Ryan van Niekerk and Garreth Von Hoesslin.
He added: “Buoyed by the success of the inaugural camp, the founder of GKC and former South African great Gary Kirsten has expressed his interest to come to Oman when the second camp is held next year.”
A total of 54 players took part in the high-performance camp, which included one Omani national and three girls.
Assisting the two GKC coaches were coaches from Oman Cricket – Laubscher, Mazhar Khan, Syed Amir Ali, Syed Amir Kaleem, Parviz al Balushi, Adeel Shafique, Muhammad Nadeem, Haider Ali and Desmond Berhardt.
The senior GKC coaches also conducted a three-day coach education session for the OC coaches.
The visiting GKC coach Niekerk said that “coaches session provided practical application of global coaching standards through CoachED Cricket across a variety of topics.”
He added: “The high-performance camp with the local coaches was quite a useful exercise as they [domestic coaches] are now better equipped with more refined processes which they can continue to explore in the coming months.”
During the high-performance camp for cricketers, the GKC trainers worked out a schedule that was split for Test, ODI and T20 formats.
Commenting on the coaching sessions for the young cricketers of Oman, Laubscher said: “The drill sets over three formats for the budding cricketers was a great hit and training sessions were held in outdoor and indoor conditions at the Oman Cricket Academy.”
He added: “The camp was greatly welcomed by the parents of the cricketers who sent in a lot of emails applauding the initiative and are now looking for the next camp with the GKC team.”
All the participants were handed a certificate of participation and a branded shirt from OC and GKC.
GKC founder and World Cup-winning coach Kirsten in a household name among cricket fans across the world. Since his retirement in 2004, the former opening batter has devoted his time running GKC, coaching international teams and franchises and tasted tremendous success, leading India to a World Cup title in 2011 and more recently as a mentor of Gujarat Titans in IPL 2022.
