FORMER Zimbabwe cricket captain Tatenda Taibu is among 25 coaches who have been shortlisted for the vacant Nepal national team coach job.
If Taibu lands the post, it will be the 37-year-old former wicketkeeper’s first major coaching job, eight years after hanging his gloves.
Taibu faces stiff competition from the other 24 candidates, not least Australian Dav Whatmore— who led Sri Lanka to World Cup glory in 1994—as well as the Indian duo of Apoorva Desai and Sulakshyan Kulkarni.
Liverpool-based Taibu will however be heartened by the fact that he made it onto a trimmed 25-man shortlist, chosen from 72 applicants.
Cricket competes favourably for popularity with football in Nepal, a south Asian country.
Interestingly, Taibu was Zimbabwe’s captain at the 2002 Under-19 World Cup in New Zealand when the African side won the plate trophy of the tournament after beating Nepal in the final.
Taibu emerged as that Youth World Cup’s overall player-of-the-tournament.
Two of the candidates vying for the Nepal post, Whatmore and Taibu, have held top technical positions within the Zimbabwe set-up. Whatmore is a former Zimbabwe coach while Taibu was chief selector.
– STAFF WRITER
