ZIMBABWE men’s cricket head coach, Dave Houghton, is pondering on his future following a string of poor results that saw the team miss out on two global events as well as the recent series defeat at home against Ireland.
The former Zimbabwe Test captain admitted the team needed a psychologist now but was unsure whether the mental expert could resolve some of the challenges bedevilling the senior men’s team.
“The head coach needs one as well (psychologist); look I think that loss in the 50- over World Cup Qualifiers really hit us badly. We were playing great cricket at the time, we had done everything right, got ourselves into a position to possibly go to the World Cup and then mess it up in one game and that took a lot to get over, personally I haven’t gone over it yet,” Houghton told reporters at the conclusion of the series against Ireland on Sunday.
“The two trips we took to Namibia, there should have been no reason why there was a hangover because we were playing all different formats. We were playing T20, we were better than the sides that we played against. It’s been a difficult time in the changing room.
“I have got lots of energy, I always have. I have got a great love for Zimbabwe Cricket. The choices I need to make now are will the team get better with me here or do they need a new voice and me not here. Am I better off serving in another department? That’s something for me and the bosses to think about over the next week or so.”
Zimbabwe’s batting frailties were heavily exposed in the ended series against Ireland with Houghton conceding that it was a catastrophe.
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“Look, I think we’ve been playing some bad cricket for a while now, but I think it’s also pretty clear to see that our batting has been a disaster for the last few months and it’s not getting any better,” he said.
“I knew when I came in that we weren’t a long batting line up…the thing about having senior and junior players is you need your senior players to stand up and they give courage to the rest of the team. Unfortunately on these tours, we lost two of our senior players through injuries and suspension and everything else and the up-and-coming batsmen were not good enough.
“So, that makes it very difficult to compete. We were always 50 or a hundred short of what we should be to be competitive. We didn’t bat a single toss to bat second but that’s beside the point, we should have been scoring on average 250 in a 50 over game. Today (Sunday), we were set up. We should have gone to 240. We ended up getting 197 so we are letting ourselves down with the bat on every single occasion.”
“I do ask for an early selection of teams so that we can make arrangements to try and get good practice especially for Christmas and New Year. I’m still waiting now, I don’t even know who’s going to Sri Lanka.”
“We need to get back in the nets, I need to get Sam and Fungi to prepare us some training wickets because we are going to Sri Lanka and we need our batsmen to get busy right now, but I can’t do that because I don’t know who’s going, it’s quite strange considering that I’m a selector as well anyway.”