Day 3: Are we international coaches??

The day started early for Josh, James and me (Warren). Alarm went off at 6:15(!) as we had been given the opportunity by Lee (who happens to be the head coach of the Rwandan men’s team) to train with some of the national team at the main stadium just over the road. So, at 7 we were at the ground and asked to run some fielding drills. These are proper cricketers and most of our coaching is with teenagers, but undaunted we set up two stations and put them through their paces. To be honest, I don’t think we let the side down and also had a couple of trundles in the net. For those that are interested, my one ball was straight and didn’t get hit for four: that’s a win… and fair to say that the Rwanda team doesn’t have much to fear from us.

Then we were off at 8am to our first school, which was our first trip outside Kigali. There were sessions at the school in GS Musave, which after the first couple of days of relative calm certainly was a more challenging affair, with in excess of 400 kids in two hours.

A quick drive for lunch and rehydration at a place recommended by Freddie was just the ticket. Chris and I suggested a coffee stop as well on our way to the next school, St Ignace (which was a totally different proposition).

It was a much smaller ground and our now well rehearsed repertoire saw two groups of 100 kids throughly enjoy themselves. The kids at the end of the session gave us an amazing send-off conducted by the teacher (see attached video… this may follow later!). This put the earlier challenges out of our mind.

The last trip was back to our original school from Sunday evening (GS Ndera). We coached 170 kids in just over an hour and a quarter.

And at the end of the day, we had a quick game of cricket against big Eric’s U14 girls team. We played six overs a side against a backdrop of hills and with lightning strikes a few miles away – but happily we remained dry, but lost by eight runs. They were rather good ….

So it was another day of contrasts – and I’m considering adding international coach as a footnote on my cricketing CV…

Warren Hyde – head coach at Theydon Bois Cricket Club; lives and breathes cricket.