IN September last year, stakeholders in the local athletics world gathered at a city hotel to witness the unveiling of the Old Mutual Westgate 16km Fun Run event.
The race, which had started as a fun run 10 months earlier, was sponsored to the tune of US$16 000, making it the richest athletics event on the National Athletic Association of Zimbabwe (Naaz) calendar.
Once again, on Tuesday last week, stakeholders from the cricket world gathered at Prince Edward School to witness another developmental project by Old Mutual when they officially unveiled a cricket sponsorship package worth US$43 000.
This was the first time that the festival, which is in its 21st year running, got resounding sponsorship.
Like Delta Beverages, who have always stood by Zimbabwe’s sport, sponsoring most sporting disciplines from grassroots to the highest level in this country, Old Mutual is slowly getting there. Hats off to the Old Mutual management and staff for such a gesture.
The developmental project saw 60 schools across the country taking part in a three-day cricket festival at various venues in Harare.
The tournament comprised 50 limited overs matches, held in partnership with Junior Cricket Committee and the Schools Cricket Development Committee.
What made the event unique is the foreign flavour that they managed to add by bringing two South African teams to participate in the event.
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In addition to this, there were a number of schools that come from across the country that also came on board.
With our national cricket team having become the punching bag of other cricket playing nations, the move has been described as a timeous intervention as it will give national team selectors a wider player base.
Taking a closer look at the current squad, new brooms have been playing well, implying that identifying more players is the only way to rebuild the nation’s pride in the sport.
What is needed now are funds for the selectors to be able to move from one place to another identifying talented players that can take Zimbabwe cricket back to where it used to belong.
Again, players that are identified need to be empowered — given enough training time and be provided with state-of-the-art equipment — at good venues.
Funds permitting, it will be ideal for Zimbabwe Cricket (ZC) to come up with academic scholarships for some of the talented kids who would have been identified from faraway places or from schools which have limited time for the sport.
What needs to be done is to identify cricket playing schools in each province where all the identified kids would enrol and hire professional coaches for them as they await national team call-ups.
This is not the first time that Old Mutual has been involved in cricket circles as they already have a developmental programme that has been ongoing in partnership with the five national cricket franchises namely Mashonaland Eagles, Matabeleland Tuskers, Mountaineers, Mid-West Rhinos and Southern Rocks.
Another developmental event was held at St Georges, sponsored by CABS, their banking subsidiary, whereby 12 local schools, including three foreign ones, took part ina Twenty20 tournament.
I hope the incoming government will spare a thought for sports development and that other corporates will pluck a leaf from Old Mutual.
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