Former South African international cricketer Lance Klusener arrived in Agartala on Saturday to join as coach for the various cricket teams of Tripura.
An all-rounder left hand batsman and right arm fast medium bowler, Klusener had signed an agreement with the Tripura Cricket Association (TCA) for 100 days coaching this season and hope that it will boost cricket in the small northeaster state.
On his arrival at the MBB airport this evening Klusener speaking to reporters said, “I have come from a small state myself and know the difficulties that comes and you can associate playing in the sports side maybe you think that you can’t play for your country. I myself did that, MS Dhoni did that and there are lot of people out there who gone the journey from smaller state possibly to play for their country and that’s why I am here obviously to help these gentlemen as well with their vision of providing the best facilities they can, and hopefully we as a team can leave a legacy. We can make somebody, weather it is a lady or man to play for India or play for IPL that will be a success for us.”
He added, “I am not for any one team here, I am for all the teams and inspire anyone who wants to be inspired and help anybody who wants to be helped. Weather it is umpire, growing coaches, cricket players so I am not really focused on any one team as here to help everybody as I said that I walked the journey from a small state myself, sometime it is a difficult journey but it’s well worth in the end.”
For the small state players who generally miss the infrastructure like big metro cities the former crickets message was, “You don’t have that great infrastructure but with better talent and dedication you have to be better than people in bigger states and bigger towns. But there are always ways there and it comes from within. So we can be there, I can be there, coaches can be there but at the end of the day we need we have to make sure that we are lighting the fire of the people who want to play for India, we need to do that.
