FORMER Zimbabwe Captain Heath Streak is the new National Cricket Team Coach.

Streak, a bowling all rounder during his playing days was unveiled by ZC chairman Tavengwa Mukuhlani at Queens Sports Club on Tuesday.
Mukuhlani revealed that Streak has a two year contract with his biggest mandate to make sure that Zimbabwe book their place at the 2019 International Cricket Council Cricket World Cup in England.

With Zimbabwe far off from an automatic qualifying spot which is a top eight position on the ICC One Day International rankings, it means that they will play in the qualifiers in 2018.

Streak takes over a post that was left vacant by the departure of Sri Lanka born Australian Davenell Whatmore who was sacked for poor results at the end of May. South African Makhaya Ntini initially hired to look after the bowlers had been the interim head coach since Whatmore was sacked and took charge of the limited overs series against India and the two Tests with New Zealand.

Mukuhlani said he believes that they have gone for the best candidate for the job. He revealed that the appointment of Streak was one of the final steps in the technical department restructuring.

“This is one of the last steps in our technical department to bring in a head coach to fill in the vacancy that was left by Dav Whatmore.

“Zimbabwe Cricket (ZC) would want to convey its gratitude and many thanks to Makhaya Ntini for the job that he has done from the time that he took over looking after the team, he went through some difficult series against India he then took the team through New Zealand, some good results were posted against India in the T20 series it was a close series, we saw an improvement in the Test series against New Zealand , as you are aware we were coming out of a so to speak an exile of playing the longer version of the game, the team managed to the second Test for five days, ’’ said Mukuhlani.

Streak’s immediate task is to start preparing the national team for the two Test matches against Sri Lanka at the end of the October which will be followed by a triangular ODI series featuring West Indies.