Global Game: Nepal player Lalit Bhandari stable after motorcycle accident

Associate cricket

Nepal men’s player Lalit Bhandari was seriously injured in a motorcycle accident travelling from Mahendranagar from Dhangadhi on Sunday.

After initially undergoing treatment at Nisarg Hospital in Dhangadhi, Bhandari regained consciousness and was transported to Kohalpur Medical College in Banke for further treatment, according to the Cricket Association of Nepal.

Local website Cricketing Nepal reported that the motorcycle, which was carrying Bhandari and a relative, was hit by a truck in the early evening.

After operations to both his hand and a leg, the 28-year-old is now in a stable condition, according to former captain Paras Khadka.

Bhandari, a left-arm seamer, collected two wickets in Nepal’s maiden ODI win during their tour to the Netherlands in 2018 and also played for his country against the MCC at Lord’s that same year. He made his List A debut during the ICC World Cricket League Championship in 2017.

Jonty Rhodes signs on as head coach of Sweden

Sweden grabbed the headlines in the Associate world on Thursday, as South African great Jonty Rhodes announced a relocation to the Scandinavian nation. Packing up with his family to take on the role of head coach with the Svenska Cricketförbundet (Swedish Cricket Federation), Rhodes told Emerging Cricket that things had moved very quickly since his initial contact, and it was a case of taking the opportunity as soon as it presented itself.

"My reach out to the Swedish Cricket Federation was literally three months ago, so a great deal has happened in the past three months," he said. "With children at this stage in the house who are 13, 10, five and three, we just said if there’s ever going to be a move, it needs to be now."

SCF Performance Director Benn Harradine, himself a decorated discus athlete with multiple Olympic appearances and a Commonwealth gold medal to his name, is excited about the partnership with Rhodes, coming just as the game is experiencing a surge of interest: "The growth [has] been just bananas. In the last two years, we’ve gone from 17 clubs to 78 clubs. We’re basically trying to manage how we can place resources around this growth, because it’s going boom, and this is where Jonty comes in."

For Rhodes, the job will be about more than simply coaching the national team – his mission is to help build things from the ground up. "A big part of my focus is not just how do we make the high-performance end of it work, but how do we ensure that the coaches themselves are excited about imparting cricket skills to kids, and making sure that they do the basics really, really well."

Canada bolsters women’s development with key appointment

In some administrative news, women’s cricket in Canada received a boost on Tuesday, with former national player Durriya Shabbir appointed to the position of women’s coordinator. According to Cricket Canada, Shabbir is "directly responsible for growing all aspects of female cricket in Canada through further promotion, the engagement of provincial associations and clubs, as well as the development of gender-specific programmes aimed at increasing the numbers of active women’s players, coaches and officials." It’s a wide remit that also sees her represent the interests of female cricket at a board level and on various committees within the organisation.

Shabbir’s role is an encouraging step forward in the development of women’s cricket in the country, which has a rich history stretching back almost two centuries in the men’s game. As well as playing for the national team, Shabbir has worked in cricket administration before; she helped to organise the first provincial women’s team in Ontario and co-created the 2018 Canada Day Women’s Cup Tournament which put a spotlight on women’s talent around the country. Cricket Canada will also hope that her experience can translate to on-field results, with the team missing out on 2019’s Women’s T20 World Cup Qualifier after they were swept 3-0 by the USA at the Americas playoff.

The late Tony Opatha's Netherlands connection

The Netherlands awoke to sad news on Friday, with ex-Sri Lanka paceman and Dutch Hoofdklaase stalwart Tony Opatha passing away aged 73. He played five ODIs for Sri Lanka across the 1975 and 1979 Cricket World Cups, before the nation was granted Full Membership, and was an integral member of the triumphant side which won the very first World Cup qualifier, the 1979 ICC Trophy.

During that World Cup, Opatha was recruited by an Irish league side, and the following year he formed what would become a lifelong bond with the Netherlands, joining VOC Rotterdam as a player-coach for the 1980 season. He played for five seasons in Rotterdam, including three consecutive championship titles in 1982-84, and then joined Excelsior Schiedam. As the organiser of a 1983 rebel tour to South Africa, he received a life ban from Sri Lankan cricket. He went on to settle in the Netherlands.

Speaking to Emerging Cricket’s Rod Lyall, KNCB High Performance Manager and former national player Roland Lefebvre reflected on Opatha’s influence at VOC: "His arrival at VOC was during the time I changed from leg-spin to pace, and his classic action, accuracy and skill in moving the ball all became important elements of my game. Discipline was a very big thing for him: if you didn’t listen he would grab you by the ears and twist hard."