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Don Makanyanga–Sports Reporter 

STUART Matsikenyeri will take charge of the Zimbabwe senior men’s tour of Bangladesh at the end of the month on an interim basis as Zimbabwe Cricket will only announce a substantive coach for the Chevrons next month.

The post fell vacant towards the end of last year when Dave Houghton tendered his resignation after the national team failed to qualify for the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup set for this year.

Following Houghton’s resignation, Walter Chawaguta was thrust into the position on an interim basis before his appointment to head the Lady Chevrons.

Zimbabwe Cricket flighted an advert for the position of the senior men’s national team coach together with that of the Under-19s, which fell vacant when Prosper Utseya stepped down at the conclusion of the ICC Under-19 World Cup in January.

Zimbabwe Cricket managing director, Givemore Makoni, told Zimpapers Sport that substantive coaches for both the Chevrons and the Under-19 national team will be announced early next month.

“We are now going through the process of short-listing and then we’ll put a panel together that will do the interviews for the head coach in the next week or so and it will obviously take some time.

“We will obviously look at maybe the second week of May (appointment of the coaches), or maybe three weeks into May.

“I am sure that we will have a head coach before the India tour, which is scheduled for July,” said Makoni.

Makoni revealed that the Chevrons assistant coach will take charge of the team when they tour Bangladesh at the end of the month as they finalise who will take over from Houghton.

“We are taking our time to do the selection process so that we get the right candidate.

“So for the Bangladesh tour, we are covered as we have an interim set up right now where Stuart (Matsikenyeri) is heading the coaching department,” he said.

Makoni revealed they had received massive responses for the Chevrons job.

“I must say we’ve had an overwhelming response; we’ve had quite a number of big names applying.

“I cannot pre-empt in terms of who applied, but we’ve had a good response from a number of coaches worldwide,” said Makoni.