Photo Credit: Cricket Namibia
Cricket Namibia is on a journey to grow the game of cricket in Namibia, especially in the development of girls and women’s cricket. We are delighted to announce the appointment of Francois van der Merwe as the Women’s National Head coach.
Francois, 44, born in South Africa represented the North West Province in all age group cricket levels, made his List A debut in 1996 and first class debut in 2000 for the North West Dragons. Being a professional cricketer, Francois played in various club leagues in the UK from 1997 – 2009.
Coaching started in 2011 for him when he was appointed as the Head coach of the North West Dragons Women’s team. Van der Merwe pursued his coaching career and obtained his Cricket South Africa Level 3 certificate in 2012. Being with the Dragons women’s team for eight years had benefitted the team and has since won eight trophies in both 50 over and T20 formats. In the 2018-2019 season, the Dragon women’s team went undefeated through the season and are the current National 50 over champions.
2018 was rather a busy year for Francois where he was the Head coach of the SA Emerging team in a tri-series against England and Australia, and was also the coach of the National women’s academy at the High-Performance Centre in Pretoria.
The newly appointed women’s Head coach focus is to promote girls and women’s cricket in all regions of Namibia, and to put structures in place to have a pipeline for all age groups to ultimately feed the National team.
“The vision for the National team is to qualify for all major ICC tournaments and to develop the National players where they can get contracts in various T20 leagues all over the world.” The Coach says it is important to grow the love for the game through mass participation under the young girls, and for them to ultimately make progress from softball cricket into hardball cricket.
Cricket Namibia is confident with the appointment of the new women’s Head coach and believe in the rise of the women and girls cricket in our country.
Name of Author: Cricket Namibia
Cricket Namibia is the governing body for cricket in Namibia. Headquartered in Windhoek, the capital city, it has been an ICC Associate Member since 1992 and is also a member of the African Cricket Association.
