Former Proteas player and coach, Gary Kirsten who also coached India to World Cup glory in 2011, has designed an online cricket coaching programme called CoachED.
CoachED Cricket is an online global cricket coach education and accreditation programme. The courses have been developed to enable cricket coaches to learn, develop, and become accredited coaches without restrictions. The course has been acclaimed both locally and internationally.
Gary Kirsten achieved a lot as a player – he played 101 Tests and 185 ODIs for South Africa. As a coach, he won the World Cup with India in 2011 and took the Proteas to number one in Test cricket rankings after beating England in a series in 2012. Now the former opening batsman aims to make an impact on helping other coaches from all levels of the game. He says the goal is to make the knowledge accessible to aspiring coaches.
“It is an online coach education platform. The intention behind it just to create an opportunity for coaches who aspire to become better coaches that they have access to a body of information that allows them to upskill and become better. I think there are many barriers to entry when you want to become upskilled as a coach around the world”.
Kirsten says it’s also for those who aspire to coach at domestic and international level.
“The CoachED platform runs over three products which is a library, 11 modules, then there’s the basic accreditation which then is the follow on from the library. Then the third product is the elite accreditation which is a platform for guys that really are aspiring to become top coaches, it’s a 12-week course. There’s a lot of interaction in the course with a lot of fantastic guest coaches that we’ve interviewed that provide information for us”.
For years now Kirsten has been doing great work in Khayelitsha where the Gary Kirsten Foundation has been providing net facilities, equipment and coaching. He also launched the first artificial Cricket Oval in Khayelitsha at the Chris Hani Secondary School. CoachED has a global footprint but also incorporates coaches from all over South Africa.
“We were very excited right at the beginning of launching the platform which was in April. We signed up as many township coaches as we could. We got our hands on 80 or 90 coaches and it’s great to see some of them on the platform obviously with my foundation all our coaches have completed the basic accreditation so it’s good to know they are certified and have the skills to coach a cricket team. We see this as a real add on to the Cricket South Africa levels that you can do and qualify yourself in. It’s great that we have Wandile Gwavu from the Lions, we have Imran Khan from KwaZulu-Natal who are on the course currently, JP Duminy and Rory Kleinveldt are some of the players from SACA that are on the course. We have a whole host of school coaches around South Africa”.
The prices for the online coaching courses vary from the basic course to the elite accreditation with 300 free licenses given to township coaches.
