Mahatlane: Preaching Processes & Building A Strong System

It would be nice to take it back to the beginning. You made a couple of very hard calls when you started the job. You dropped a couple of senior players. Was that your way of sending a message? 

When we came back from Namibia after the series loss and played a lot of internal cricket prior to the Pearl of Africa Series, I remember walking into selection and saying, okay, I think we need to have a look at some of these young guys that have done well. And a lot of people might not know it, but Simon Ssesazi only made his debut in 2021, even though he's played over 50 games already.

Frank Akankwasa was in that team, too. And these were the kids that hadn't gone to Namibia. So for me, by playing a lot of cricket, you got a lot more data from where to select. And the guys knew it. And if you look, I think the two big controversies of the Pearl of Africa Series were Roger Mukasa and Frank Nsubuga, who were both left out at the time. I had a long chat with both of them and said, it's not personal. It's about numbers. And if you look at how Henry Ssenyondo bowled and Akankwasa bowled in that tournament, and how Ssesazi and Saud Islam at the time, you'd say that they were justified selections at the time.

Did that dropping spur on Nsubuga to understand that unless he does as well as the young ones, it may be over for him? 

Nsubuga got an injury where he popped his shoulder in Namibia. When he got back, I said, I'm looking to try and get three players per position so that we create competition. Because I think competition breeds excellence. And, over the three years, we've noticed that a guy like Roger, for me, the way he's playing at the moment, he's world class. And maybe he needed a young Ronald Lutaaya, a young Simon Ssesazi, a young Robinson Obuya to put him under pressure to fight for the number.

And that is the way a system can grow. A lot of other guys have been pushed. We would never have known how good Lutaaya is until we saw him playing in the Elite League, then for the national team on the tours in Rwanda when he made his real full debut.

How did you work with the board, the secretariat and even the players? Was the environment good enough to deliver the results that they wanted from you? It was tough. Davis Turinawe (Development Manager) and I wrote a High Performance paper during my second week in Uganda. We presented it to the secretariat on December 3, 2020. The paper was basically on how we use unlimited resources in terms of the number of coaches available to make sure that we help all the teams graduate.

And for the longest while, I remember I took a trip down to Fort Portal and it was in Nyakasura where I saw guys like Joseph Baguma and Brian Asaba among others. It was part of that whole plan to make sure that we get all the resources we can to try and help the whole program to get to the next level. And I think it got seen, funny enough, earlier this year.

So how do we maximize what we have? So for me, we've shown that there's a lot of potential in it and that it can work. And it's a matter of trying to sell it to the right people.

But talk in the corridors is that a lot of the performances of the team was, especially in the T20 version, were very reliant on the nationalised players. Guys like Dinesh Nakrani and Riazat Ali Shah were doing the hard work for the team. Was that something that really bothered you that you felt the victory of the team should be owned by our local boys?

No, not at all. Everybody had a role and they fulfilled it. So whether you're nationalised or you're local, I thought everybody put up their hand. If we look at the Africa Cup finals, for example, I thought Riazat played brilliantly. And there was another guy called Deus Muhumuza at the other end who also made 50.

From a team point of view, I'd like to believe that we never, ever spoke about him and her. And I thought everybody had a role. But generally, I thought we were a family. I thought we performed properly as a group and as a unit.

And everybody had a job to do. And if you did the job, you stayed in the team. If you didn't, you got left out.

How many tough choices did you have to make while you were in charge of the team? And how much support did you get from the selectors, especially to make sure you back up a lot of guys to give them an extended run in the team?

I would have a lot of long discussions with the selectors; Richard Lwamafa, Richard Okia and Nehal Bibodi, and they generally backed the process. Before even going into a selection meeting, Jackson Ogwang (current coach) and I would sit for weeks on end and discuss different permutations.

So all of us, by the time the final 14 or the final 11 was announced, there had been a lot of discussions. As a coach, you always have to follow your gut instinct. And it's important that if you feel something about a certain individual, you back that.

And that's why as a coach, when that time comes, and sometimes your calls don't work, and then you walk.

In terms of skills, did you feel that maybe our skills were suited better for a particular format than the other, and it was a bit difficult to find a balance between the two?

No, I’m a big believer in the game of cricket. And if you go back to when T20, when the IPL started, and you look at the top 10 batters in that first IPL season, you're talking about Matthew Hayden, Sachin Tendulkar, Raul Dravid, VVS Laxman, you're talking proper test batsmen.

So I genuinely think that if you can play one format, you can play the other. And I think from a skill level, and a lot of people always talk about cricket being a 95% mind game and 5% technical. And I find that a lot of coaches and a lot of cricket people, all of us, actually don't do that proportionally enough. I think we spend way too much time worried about technique.

Is that an area that you felt maybe were a bit lacking as a unit? The mental bit.

Yeah! I think after spending a bit of time there, I really shifted the focus from a technical point of view to growing men. Because remember, when you're out in the middle, you by yourself, it's you and your partner and how you think

I won't mention names, but there were two guys that were batting beautifully on my first tour in Namibia and they just put on a 50-run partnership. And the next thing they were waving to the changing room. And I asked the guys next to me, why are they waving?

They said, coach, they want to know what to do. And I had a laugh. I said, they must just keep batting. Because when I got into the team, I think there was a lot of structure on how to do, what to do, when to do it. And hopefully, I tried to help people grow and think and summarise the situation out in the middle and find solutions out there.

But what I tried to do is get players to start taking a lot more responsibility on how we played and how we executed certain situations.

In the past, the technical team was really virtually the coach and his assistant. But while you were with the team, we saw the involvement of Edgar Kazibwe (psychologist) in the set-up, Shamim Nassali as a full-time physiotherapist and Emmanuella Oroma as a Strength & Conditioning coach. Was that something that you felt could add more value to the players, first of all, and also to the group in terms of performance? 

Yeah, personally, that's what I felt. And again, the answer can only be with the players

But we're still a bit short in terms of where the ideal world is going. We played Namibia, they had a support staff of nine. So, it's understanding that different people have different roles. Nobody knows it all. And I am far from knowing it all.

Our National League is averaging 120 runs per fixture. Can one argue that the National Team selection criteria is responsible for the National League's demise? 

Maybe, maybe, I don't know. But what you're looking for is you're looking for a league that will hopefully support the National Team because that's where the challenges should be. You know, you're expecting guys that are training with the National Team to put up scores and lead and dominate club cricket.

So, if you look at it, I'll use a South African example where I've worked for 25 years. If you're averaging 60 in first-class cricket, you'll be expected to average 40 in the Test side because that's how the levels should be.

But unfortunately, where a lot of associate crickets find themselves is that, you know, in the Uganda situation, some clubs play one game every three months.

What kind of support would you have wanted to get from the board that you never got? And that applies to the team as well.

I think it's very tough for the board because ideally what you'd like is good access to quality facilities, but it's something that the board cannot control. When I was there, it's obviously because Lugogo belonged to somebody else. In Entebbe, and hopefully with Jinja coming through, there'll be a lot more control on the kind of facilities and the kind of equipment that the team can have. I think from a team point of view, I've got absolutely no qualms. I think I got 100% backing. I'm very humbled that even to this day, I think I can't go to sleep without 30 or 40 messages from the group. The kind of support and love that has been shared is amazing. I was never an easy coach, and I think the support they gave me, and the understanding, I cannot question that at all.

Sometimes you'd be very mad when the team wins, if they hadn’t followed the processes. Was that your kind of style, that the process is more important than actually the result?

I genuinely believe that if you go through a process, you'll get more positive results. And I recall that Papua New Guinea game so well because it was just a matter of execution. Every boundary they hit us, they hit us to the short boundary, and every boundary we hit, we hit to the long boundary. Processes allow for more consistent results over a long period of time. A guy like Pascal Murungi has played, for example, at 21, I think he's now played 33 games. Can you imagine him in 10 years' time when he's played 150 T20 internationals? What a different beast he will be in terms of thinking and execution.

Is that what you wanted everyone to buy into?

Up to now, Ssesazi has played 63 T20Is for Uganda. And that's because he's been given that amount of time to work on his skill, learn on the job. And then eventually, down the line, probably when he's at 100 T20Is, he will be a match winner for Uganda.

There's so much that follows any coaching process. And you know as a coach, it is a high-risk job. And if you cannot make the brave calls, then unfortunately, you're also going to be out. So you might as well go out singing Frank Sinatra’s I did it my way.

What do you think we can do differently going forward as Uganda? And of course, for the players, how do they improve?

I think one of the most key positions in any country right now is Director of Cricket. I think if Uganda cricket can find a way to find one whose sole mandate is to make sure that from mini cricket all the way to the national side, there's a unifying purpose and a unique style of play, find the Ugandan way.

And in this term, I'll use a simple example of rugby where a lot of people say, why are the Springboks winning?

Rassie Erasmus has been director of rugby for 15 years at South African Rugby. When Siya Kolisi (SA captain) was 15, he identified him. If you look at the Springbok side that won the game, all of them played together at Under 18. So they've been together for 14 years in different formats, in different conditions. But it takes an individual to run with that process.

You know, there's an exciting kid I've seen in Jinja. 17-year-old Peter Ocen. If there's a Director of Cricket, he'll make sure that Ocen, by the time he's 25, is putting pressure on the current crop of pacers; Cosmas Kyewuta and Juma Miyagi. But there has to be a process. We have to find a way to create a long-term pathway and pipeline.

But how do the players help themselves to improve and become next-generation superstars?

I always used to say to players, find out what the other guys are doing and try to do it yourself as well. Ultimately, a player is a brand. So you need to decide yourself what kind of brand you want to be and how you're going to go about doing it.

So come November 21st, there will be an opportunity in Namibia for the world to see you. So you go score 100 against Zimbabwe, maybe one of the franchises puts you up, and then the sky is the limit.

You never know, with so much cricket and with the way the ICC have regulated the leagues, with only four Tier 1 players allowed in every league except IPL, there's more opportunities for Associate cricketers that are willing to put in the yards.

I think one of the things that has really plagued Ugandan cricket is a historical problem. The inability to contain some players like Shahzad Kamal due to other careers. Can you just shed some light?

As a system, we really tried to make room for everyone available. I know that we used to be at Lugogo at 7am every morning before players were contracted, and guys like Davis Karashani, Muhumuza, Hamu Kayondo used to come through and practice. Shahzad would come in the afternoon. A lot of people, maybe, forgot that Shahzad actually played in the Pearl of Africa Series. And unfortunately, he missed out on the T20Is because he had to go to Pakistan.

So the system is there. The key thing is making sure that you can help the guy find balance.

How do we strike a balance? And make sure we have the right people we’re investing in this time.

It's just a matter of making sure that there is long-term planning. It's difficult because from a board point of view, I'm chairman for two years and I want all my glory in the two years. But the plan might be to be good in 2030, not 2021. So, yeah, it's a very tough one, but it genuinely needs just a foundation and a planning process that everybody believes in.

Does it require a classroom set up or anything similar?

Yeah, I think it does. I genuinely think it requires a classroom set up. It requires – we've got a lot of rainy days in Uganda. It requires people sitting and watching cricket and listening to commentary and understanding and listening to some of the great voices on commentary at this World Cup.

So sometimes we look at the end result. Because everybody can play a cover drive. Everybody can bowl a fast ball. But when do I bowl my slow ball? When do I bowl the bouncer? When do I bowl the yorker? You know, those are discussion points that I don't think a lot of us do at every level.

And it's important when we help our coaches understand that, and put our coaches to such levels that they're just not interested in, we won this game today, but in, oh, this is how we won the game.

Does the performance of the Baby Cricket Cranes (U-19 side) in Tanzania relate to the future of Ugandan cricket, say for the next five years?

This might sound very controversial, but for me, I think too much emphasis is put on trying to get to the World Cup for Uganda U-19s. And what happens in terms of that is that then you start keeping players that should have been let go, and more players given opportunities, and it talks to the system again.

Because again, it's about creating a system that gives you numbers. So Cricket South Africa's investment in their under-19 program is to give them one player a year who's going to play 10 years of international cricket. So if you look at this current World Cup side, the only year that has two players is 2014, which had, from an under-19 point of view, Aiden Makram and Kagiso Rabada. Marco Janssen was 2019, Heinrich Klaasen was 2011, Quinton de Kock was 2010, Temba Bavuma was 2009.

So that has to be the thinking, that if you create a system that gives you one international cricketer per year then your system is working.

At the World Cup qualifier, we play two big boys, Zimbabwe and Namibia. After Matchday No.3, we will either be three-nil up or two-one up or somewhere in between. Do you think we can be one of the two teams to go to the 2024 World Cup?

Every individual needs to understand that they're a brand. It's about them bringing their best.

If Uganda plays fearless cricket like they have over the last two years and really back themselves, a lot of people forget that we lost 3-0 to Namibia this year, but none of the players that are going on tour were not even there because they were either injured or other things. And Uganda still managed to score 200. So be fearless, back yourself, back your ability, and anything is possible.

Ultimately, this is going out to the world. People are going to see you. And all you want is for people to mention your name.

Coach, finally, who do you think is going to win the World Cup?

The head says India, the heart says South Africa.

ICC MEN’S T20 WC QUALIFIER - AFRICA

TOURNAMENT FIXTURES

Nov 22, 10.30am: Uganda vs. Tanzania, Wanderers

Nov 23, 3pm: Uganda vs. Zimbabwe, United

Nov 24, 3pm: Uganda vs. Namibia, Wanderers

Nov 27, 3pm: Uganda vs. Nigeria, United

Nov 28, 3pm: Uganda vs. Kenya, Wanderers

Nov 29, 3pm: Uganda vs. Rwanda, United

TEAM UGANDA SQUAD TO NAMIBIA: Brian Masaba (C), Simon Ssesazi, Ronak Patel, Roger Mukasa, Riazat Ali Shah, Cyrus Kakuru, Dinesh Nakrani, Kenneth Waiswa, Henry Ssenyondo, Jonathan Ssebanja, David Wabwire, Frank Nsubuga, Robinson Obuya, Alpesh Ramjani, Bilal Hassun