When Leonard Nhamburo signed a two-year deal as the new head coach for Rwanda Women National Cricket team in January last year, the Rwanda Cricket Association was confident that the Zimbabwean was a valuable asset that can play an instrumental role in the growth of cricket among women.
The local cricket fraternity at the time had high expectations for the coach, who established his name in African Cricket, having played a big role in the development of the game in his home country Zimbabwe for over a decade before joining Namibia in 2019.
With Zimbabwe, the tactician won Africa Regional World Cup Qualifiers 2016, the 4 Nations U-19 Girls Tournament Botswana in 2014 while he also qualified the country for the 2017 Global World Cup Women in Sri Lanka.
His achievements with Zimbabwe caught the attention of the Namibian Cricket Association which signed him in 2019 to coach their Women’s national Cricket team.
During his tenure, Namibia’s women cricket team became the 2019 Africa Regional World Cup qualifiers runners-up before qualifying them for the 2019 Global Women World Cup Qualifiers in Scotland.
The tactician is now looking forward to writing another story with Rwanda’s U19 women team by qualifying them to the ICC U19 women’s T20 World Cup slated next year in South Africa.
And asked whether he can do it with Rwanda, Nhamburo confidently said, "I’ve been to six Africa senior women’s world cup qualifiers with three different teams, and all the teams that I worked with managed to be successful. It’s something that I, as a coach, pit myself on the bench and be like ‘I know something better’.”
"So, with this wonderful team, I also need to do the same thing with Rwanda. To say...whatever that I was telling other teams and it worked, why can’t we make it work for Rwanda?’ then we start from there...and I am positive that it will work with Rwanda going forward,” he added.
Rwanda U19 women on Saturday beat Nigeria by nine runs in the opening game of the U-19 women T20 World Cup Africa qualifiers which are underway in Botswana till September 13.
The victory saw the team pocket a bonus of Rwf1m which they will be receiving for every game they win as pledged by the federation.
Nhamburo is now looking to build on the momentum from Sunday’s victory against Nigeria to win every match his team will play, including Wednesday’s clash with Malawi.
While the tournament was thought to be the right occasion for the coach to prove doubters wrong, the coach told Times Sport, "It’s not about me proving you guys wrong or right, it’s all about the knowledge and skills that impact the players and how they take them going forward to make sure that they give us good results”
"It’s a do or die,” he added.
Rwanda is pooled in Group B alongside Nigeria, Tanzania, Nigeria, Malawi and Mozambique.
They will take on Malawi next in the second group fixture on September 6 before facing Mozambique in match day three the following day. They will close the group stages with a clash against Tanzania on September 9.
The top two teams in group A will progress to the semi-finals and will be joined by other top two teams in Group B consisting of teams from hosts Botswana, Sierra Leone, Namibia and Uganda.
The nine-nation qualifier will see the winner of the tournament advance to the main event in 2023 in South Africa.