Excited Moore expects T20 progress

David Moore is relishing the chance to lead Bermuda cricket through a vital period after extending his stay as National Coach.

Australian Moore, the former West Indies Head Coach, was expected to leave at the end of February but will now continue for at least another three months.

Arnold Manders will continue in his role as Interim National Coach, working under the guidance of Moore, who says the move will allow him to finish implementing key youth programmes as well as helping the national team through the ICC Regional T20 qualifying in Florida between March 18-22 and the ICC World Cricket League Division 3 tournament, which will be held here from April 28.

He told the Bermuda Sun he expects qualification from the T20 event to the global qualifying tournament in Dubai but warned the much-anticipated Division 3 tournament will be “heavy work”.

He said: “Without putting the mockers on us, we made the T20 qualifiers last time, so I would expect us to go through again if we play to our ability, which we should do.

“It’s a difficult one the Division 3, though, because yes, we should finish in the top two there’s no doubt about that, we should win it being on home soil but the vagaries of this sort of cricket and the quality
of the cricketers around, we really do have to play our best cricket for five games.”

Moore added that the T20 global qualifying tournament in Dubai last year — where Bermuda won just one match — showed why  the island’s experienced players will be crucial.

He said: “In these games all the players are key. If you look at Janeiro Tucker  who won two Man of the Match awards in the world T20 qualifiers last year, he did well. Dion Stovell was our key off-spin bowler last time, he took 14 wickets and was in the top five wicket-takers in the tournament.

“To get two individual performances like that and not be higher up in the tournament is a little unusual, so we’ve really got to get the rest of our team to rally around some key players — David Hemp, Lionel Cann, Malachi Jones, captain [Steven] Outerbridge, Rodney Trott, plus the younger guys coming through.”

For Moore personally, it’s clear leaving at the end of Februry would have left a sense of unfinished business — and he remains open to staying once the new deal runs out.

He said: “It’s exciting because we’ve got a number of things we want to do, which would have been left a little unfinished.

“We thought that contract was going to end and then was some stuff we were going to do that we wanted to do, so the Board and I were able to work together to get the extension, which was great.” 

For more from Moore, don’t miss Friday’s Bermuda Sun.