Zimbabwe Cricket national fielding coach Walter Chawaguta says ‘acceptable’ fielding standards are not good enough and there is need for improvement.

Chawaguta has been conducting one-on-one fielding sessions with national team players but has also extended his services to provincial and U19 players.

“My mandate is to get Zimbabwe back on the map in the fielding department.

“My coming into the set up was to raise the profile and standard of fielding in the national team, (Zimbabwe) A side and the U19s.

“The current state of fielding in Zimbabwe is probably on acceptable levels and one of the things we have discovered is we can’t just be acceptable or average, we have to be very good,” said Chawaguta.

He said they are also taking fielding statistics seriously just like bowling and batting figures.

“We started looking into statistics when we were playing Afghanistan where you actually measure the fielding, just like you can measure a bowling performance.

He continued:

“So we are quantifying fielding performances for example if there are four misfields which all result in fours, that is 16 runs…in the end we compare and contrast that…how many runs have we set and see whether we are in the deficit or not.

“We look at the dropped catches for example, if you drop a catch when a guy is on 50 then he goes on to score a hundred effectively that drop catch has cost us 50 runs.”

Chawaguta believes players should appreciate high fielding standards at a young age.

“The way I have gone about doing it is obviously first and foremost working with the national team players and demanding high standards from the national team and A side players.

 “Also even going far down as the U19s where I believe that’s where all the hard work needs to take place.

“It’s actually the U19s and the provincial teams so I get involved with the national teams when I do have time…you set standards high there so that when a player eventually gets to the A side or the national team he knows the required level of intensity and skills are.