Top-flight cricketers in the ACT are few and far between. With hopes to change this, ex-Zimbabwean international player Vusi Sibanda, has joined the ranks of Cricket ACT to coach local cricketers to the highest level.
Vusi Sibanda is a great of Zimbabwean cricketer. He has represented Zimbabwe at numerous World Cups, playing over 160 international games in total.
You might be asking yourself, how has he ended up here? Well it’s a very remarkable story where bad luck saw this cricket legend stuck in Canberra.
After becoming a professional in 2001, his career spanned almost 18 years, with his last professional game being in 2019.
He played all three formats of cricket for Zimbabwe (Test, One Day and T20). Subsequently, he was able to compete in numerous World Cup Tournaments.
Since his retirement from professional cricket in 2019, Vusi has tried his hand at a few different career paths.
He briefly studied corporate finance before learning to commentate. Whilst learning to commentate, he met some people who eventually led him to Australia, where he started coaching with ACT.
Since then, Vusi has moved up the ranks of coaching with Cricket ACT to now be one of the head coaches of the Meteors, ACT’s Women’s team. They compete against the other states in the Women’s National Cricket League (WNCL).
Talking to Vusi in the Cricket ACT offices, he reflected on his professional career, his change from playing to coaching and what his ambitions are as a coach.
Q: What initially drew you to cricket?
A: Having two older brothers. It was always competitive. Playing soccer at all times, and so when I realised there’s also a game of cricket at a very young age, I just wanted to do something different.
My parents were not overly excited about me playing cricket. They always wanted me to focus on my academics… I was always tired from practising cricket, I never had the chance to do my homework.
My mum got really annoyed, to the point she was like, ‘I’ve had enough of this, you’re no longer playing cricket’. So I had to sneak out to play cricket.
It went on for about a year and then only to receive a letter from Zimbabwe Cricket that your son has been selected to represent Zimbabwe on the under-14s. She goes, ‘What? What’s this? I thought you were not playing cricket?’
I didn’t have any response to that. But because it was to represent the country, she was like, ‘Well, I can’t really say no, can I?
Q: What was the highlight of your professional career?
A: There’d be a few … I would say on my debut against the West Indies.
I remember looking at the team that the West Indies had, they had Merv Dilon, Vasbert Drakes, Fiddle Edwards, Jerome Taylor, all the bowlers and I was thinking, ‘I’m going to be opening the batting against this thing!’
I remember walking onto the field. I think I faced Fidell Edwards at the start and he was hooping ball a long way. I kept playing and missing.
I sort of settled some of the nerves, and then, even though they kept coming hard, I got a 50 on my debut, and then I was like, ‘Oh, hang on, I can do this.’
Q: What was the memorable win you were a part of?
Obviously being part of the World Cup is special. All the players would dream to be part of the World Cup, representing your country.
That first game against Australia, we were a very young team at the time and I remember we restricted Australia for 130 or 140.
I opened the batting and I faced Brett Lee … He was pretty quick!
First couple balls, it’s a bit of a shock to the system, coming from 135 clicks as your fastest bowler to suddenly facing 150.
That game we had a really good start. I remember the opening partnership and I got a few off the middle of Brett Lee, convincingly as well.
We went on to chase down the score, and against the odds, we won the 1st T20 game of the inaugural World Cup.
Q: When did you make the decision to move to Canberra and pursue coaching for ACT?
A: I had zero experience in coaching before I came here, and to be quite frank with you, five years ago, I didn’t expect myself to be in coaching.
I was studying corporate finance at that time. And then I thought, ‘I don’t know if I want to do this for a living, I might as well go do my accreditation in Australia. But they’re not taking internationals.’
So I decided to start doing commentary. At the time when I was commenting, I talked to this guy who is a former president of the Eastlake Cricket Club.
He convinced me to come to Canberra to try and get my accreditation – at the time, there were bushfires here. I was like, ‘I don’t even want to make it there’.
I got here on the 20th of January and it was extremely hot. So I didn’t get to do anything for that first weekend. The games got cancelled because of the heat.
The following weekend it hailed, so bad! – And games got cancelled again … I’m thinking ‘what am I doing? What is this place? Just to try and get Level 3? I might as well go back home and carry on doing my commentary!’
The next game, there were whispers about COVID that’s happening in China, and there’s no COVID here in Australia.
During that game, whispers came in that someone’s got COVID and they’ve walked through the border, and the borders have been shut immediately.
This was in February 2020, and I’m thinking, ‘Well, I don’t know what’s gonna happen’. And then CA immediately paused the accreditation … They didn’t have a date for it.
I organised a meeting with Cricket ACT and said, ‘I’d like to get a job coaching cricket’ and they said, ‘we don’t have a job for you. But if you would like to help with the pathway coaching?’, and that’s when it all started.
I hadn’t seen my family in four years. They’ve just recently joined me.
Q: What impact do you want to have on cricket in Canberra?
There’s so much talent here. I see it, and I do believe that there’s so much.- I just would like to be part of this story that Cricket ACT are going through.
I just would love to see, from a male perspective or female perspective, success and stay here, strengthen the competition here and get the Cricket here to grow big.
I want to invite a lot of young kids as well to come through and be part of the successes around this organisation.
Photos by James Vandermee