Indian American Jatin Patel to train cricket coaches in US

The American Cricket Federation has turned to Jatin Patel, an Indian-American coach, to lead a new initiative to train cricket coaches in the land of baseball through a comprehensive American coach-education system,

Indianapolis-based Patel, an officeholder at both ACF and US Youth Cricket, is a national leader in coach-education and a graduate of Cricket Australia's Level 2 Coach training programme.

Rather than remain dependent on occasional and sporadic one-off coach-education sessions conducted for Americans by foreign cricket bodies, today American cricket takes control of its own future through the new coach-education system, ACF said in a media release.

"The ACF coach-education programme will make a positive impact across cricket in the USA. Cricket education and its regulation by ACF is a key step forward to better cricket ahead," said Patel.

"ACF's initiative will provide many opportunities to existing and potential coaches in the USA, and is also needed to educate and develop new home-grown coaches at all levels," he said.

"In addition, youth and women's development programmes in USA lack coaches and this will provide the needed jumpstart in these areas.

"I am looking forward to leading this first-ever American cricket coaching education and certification system, one that will help cricket rapidly expand in America."

ACF CEO Jamie Harrison said, "There has always been a vast, unmet need for coach-education in the United States, one that we have tried to fill, unsuccessfully, by asking others to do it for us. Now, those days are gone.

"As cricket grows in America, this will become a critical resource for coaches and teams alike."

"Cricket in the United States is advancing on all fronts, and the ACF coach-education programme is just another example of that progress," Harrison said.

ACF's certified coaching accreditation programme will also include renewals, recertification and disciplinary enforcements and standardised national cricket coaching accreditation.

(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)