Date-stamped : 01 Mar97 - 06:14
VISIT OF CONRAD HUNTE TO ZIMBABWE

20 February 1997

The former West Indian opening batsman, Conrad Hunte, is now  the
national  development  coach of the United Cricket Board of South
Africa. He is currently in Zimbabwe at the invitation of the Zim-
babwe  Cricket  Union  to look at the local development programme
and advise where necessary.   A  press  conference was  held   at
Harare  Sports  Club today, when ZCU president Peter Chingoka and
chief executive Don Arnott introduced him to the local press.

Mr Hunte was full of praise for the  quality  of  the  Zimbabwean
programme.  After  visiting Chitungwiza, the Harare equivalent of
Soweto, and several other townships, he declared that the quality
of  the  Under-12  cricketers  he had seen there was the equal of
anything in South Africa.  He stressed the importance of ensuring
that   these  young  players  were kept  in the game through high
school years and into club cricket, a problem that the ZCU is al-
ready trying to tackle.

Mr Hunte, relaxed and jovial, spent some time talking  about  the
progress  made  by  the  development  schemes in the eleven South
African cricketing provinces, many of them aided by the type   of
sponsorship  not  currently available in Zimbabwe.  He named Paul
Adams and Mackay Ntini, of Border, as two players to have   bene-
fited from the programmes.

Before the meeting, Mr Arnott revealed that the Zimbabwean crick-
eters,  on  their  recent tour to South Africa, had bought out of
their own pockets a large amount of junior kit for  the  develop-
ment programme, and donated it to the ZCU.

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