Taibu: Emotional last moments with mentor Bill Flower, and the makings of a coach
- vimbayi makwavarara
- Apr 9
- 10 min read
BY ENOCK MUCHINJO
HARARE – Advanced age, fading memory and declining health didn’t prevent Bill Flower from reminiscing the good old days with one of his proudest protégés, Tatenda Taibu, when the two last met before the veteran coach’s death in England last November.
Grassroots stalwart Flower, the father of Zimbabwe cricket greats Andy and Grant, passed on in Surrey in November just months after a visit from Taibu – one of the several young black cricketers that he invested in more than three decades ago in his home country.
The older Flower was now retired and living in the UK.
“I visited him in his last days,” Liverpool-based Taibu, who is on a visit back home in Harare, tells SportsCast in this wide-ranging conversation.
“Just before I visited him, the nurses had told me that ‘you know, he might not remember you because he has dementia’. So they said ‘please don’t take it in any bad way if he doesn’t remember you, because he doesn’t remember people sometimes’.”
Accompanied by wife Loveness, sons TJ and Gershom and a relative, Taibu assured the carers that he would make it short and sweet.
“But as soon as I got in, he just smiled and said ‘Taibu, such a fine young man you’ve become’. TJ, Gershom, Loveness, and we had our cousin, my nephew Matipa, they all greeted him and we spent an hour with him. Unfortunately, it was raining on that day so we didn’t manage to take him for a bit of a stroll outside, obviously he was on the wheelchair then.”
From the 80s to the mid-90s, Flower drove to Harare’s black townships of Highfield and Glen Norah to fetch upcoming and less-privileged cricketers for coaching and matches on the better facilities of the Zimbabwean capital city’s suburban parts. Through his solo volunteer coaching project in the townships, Flower immersed himself in the community, taking the young players under his wing and getting to know their families.
It was a talented group of youngsters from the local Highfield and Glen Norah primary schools. But one player that made the biggest impression on Flower was a lively and diminutive wicketkeeper-batsman called Tatenda, the two instantly forming a relationship that lasted over 30 years up until what turned out to be their last encounter in November.
Breaking down in tears
“He was talking about back in the old days, what used to happen,” Taibu recollects.
“He remembered my mom, and he remembered the promise that he made to mom that for as long as he was going to be there, he was going to make sure that I go for all the games that he arranged. He was just emotional, he cried about four times and I remember when we were leaving, the nurses were like ‘yes, it happens like that sometimes, it means you were really dear to his heart because just your side jerked up all those memories’. And one of the nurses said ‘if I go to the shops, and say I come back in an hour, he might not remember all that would have happened’. I was just happy that it brought back all these emotions and memories that was in his heart. And it was really nice for me to introduce him to the family and to reminisce on the times we had. Unfortunately, he passed on but I have fond memories of him, and that is what I will carry.”
Coaching at the World Cup
Former Zimbabwe captain Taibu, who resigned as Papua New Guinea’s head coach in February following a dispute between players and the board, has now been short-listed for the vacant USA post with an announcement expected soon.
The PNG role was Taibu’s first international coaching job, and the 41-year-old ex-Zimbabwe star says the big jump didn’t overwhelm him.
“It was what I thought it would be,” Taibu says. “Yes, there are challenges and there are takeaways. It is interesting to coach different people because at that level it’s not really that you’re coaching someone, it’s kind of like you’re managing a group of grown-ups. And you’re working together to find solutions to the problems that the team will be facing. So that’s how I look at it. As opposed to the actual coaching, which the name of the position holds.”
Taibu was appointed PNG coach in August 2023, going on to lead the Pacific islanders at the 2024 T20 World Cup in the United States and Caribbean.
PNG gave West Indies a real scare in their opening match, but ended up losing by five wickets in Guyana after the co-hosts had needed 37 runs to win off the final 19 balls.
“We really should have won the opening game against the West Indies, and I reckon had we not made a couple of silly errors, we would have won that,” Taibu looks back.
“I think the captain (Assad Vala) lifted his hand up to say that he made a couple of wrong decisions. So we should have taken the review when we got (Nicholas) Pooran struck down lbw plumb, which wasn’t given by the umpire. And then the captain decided not to take the review, which was an error that cost us and it cost us for two reasons. Number one: it is Nicholas Pooran, he’s a very good player, and the sixth over we went for 19 runs and Nicholas Pooran hit 17 of those. So if he had been dismissed, those 17 runs would not have happened and we had posted a very good total, I think we had 137 if my memory serves me right, which was a good score on the wicket we were playing on in the Caribbean.
“And then the second error that the captain made was our sixth bowler was a part-time off-spinner whose name is Sese (Bau) and he bowled him the final over of the power-play. If he wanted to bowl spin, fair enough, he had himself to bowl. Our captain was the number two spinner and there was another boy, John Kariko, who is a very good left-arm spinner and he didn’t bowl him either. Yes, he wasn’t going to bowl him because Nicholas Pooran was there, but if he wanted to bowl an off-spinner, he should have brought himself and not a part-time spinner.”
Enter Phil Simmons
For the World Cup, Papua New Guinea engaged the services of Phil Simmons, who guided the West Indies to the 2016 T20 World Cup title. The Trinidadian joined PNG as a “specialist coach” for the tournament last year.
Taibu was still playing for Zimbabwe when Simmons was appointed the African side’s coach back in 2004, the former West Indies all-rounder’s first major coaching job before going on to establish himself as one of the leading coaches in international cricket.
“It was actually my idea to bring Phil into the (PNG) team to help me during the World Cup,” says Taibu.
“He’s West Indian and we were playing in the West Indies. I know Phil Simmons from when he was coaching me, and I have a very good relationship with him. I love him and he knows that, and I know he loves me. When you have someone who you believe in, in a team, it does more good than bad. To give an example, one of the players called Sese was having a bit of a bad patch in the warm-up games before the first game against the West Indies. The day before the game, I wasn’t sure if I should play him. I went to Phil and I said ‘coach, I don’t know what to do right now about this player. He’s one of my main players, but he is struggling, he can’t seem to be able to hit the middle of the bat, what should I do? Tell me what you think I should do, and that’s what I’m going to do’. And he said ‘look, from what you said about him, I think you should play him’. And that’s exactly what I did, I played Sese and he was our highest run-scorer, he scored 50 in that game. So it’s nice to have someone you just can turn to, and you know that whatever they are going to tell you, there is no question about it. So it was really lovely to have Phil in the changing-room again. The boys loved him, he just gelled in well. It was just surreal.”
The life of a PNG coach
Papua New Guinea is still an upcoming associate member of the International Cricket Council (ICC). Cricket there often finds itself overshadowed by other sporting codes, such as rugby league and Australian rules football.
Lower participation and a shorter player development pathway, in comparison to other cricket-playing nations, naturally provides a challenge for anyone coaching the national side.
Taibu however found it to be a positive challenge.
“Cricket is in my blood,” remarks Taibu.
“I reckon I don’t lose energy, I don’t struggle when I’m coaching or playing, for that matter. I just find ways on tough situations, and I enjoy it. I actually enjoy it immensely whether it’s coaching, whether its administration, I do just really enjoy my cricket so the experience was really nice.
“I learnt different experiences, different situations, different scenarios, understanding a different country and how that country is like and how they bring up their players. So the biggest takeaway for me was how I managed to deal with the fact that because they start their cricket quite late, they struggle to learn the tactical side of the game because they don’t play enough games. So I devised a plan to counter that. Every Friday, instead of having a cricket session, instead of having a proper cricket practice on the field, I would take them for a class. So we would do a class and talk about different things, just to sharpen their mind, whether it was cricket things or just simple things, life coaching. Whatever it was, Friday we never set foot on the field. It was a classroom, so that we could sharpen their brains to be able to think on their feet whilst they played the game. By the time we played the World Cup, I wasn’t leading the team talks, they were leading the team talk. And so we did that for a year, I was really happy to see the fruits thereof.”
Competing with the big boys
If Taibu gets the nod for the USA job, he will add to a crop of international cricket’s youngest coaches.
Coaching against some of the game’s seasoned coaches is something the former Zimbabwe wicket-keeper relishes.
“There are pros and cons, you cannot buy experience in a shop,” Taibu says.
“The fact that older coaches would have seen a lot more games than you’ve seen means they can come up with different scenarios. So that experience has its place and its advantages.”
The evolution of cricket training methods may appear to handicap the old-guard as more changes emerge, but Taibu views this as a double-edged sword.
“There are certain things that older coaches would keep a certain way, (things) that they think should be and how things are,” comments Taibu.
“Whereas we live in a world now where things are quite flexible and information is everywhere. So the younger players are willing to try things, whereas, you know, the older coaches would be a little rigid. But if there is an older and experienced coach who’s flexible, then wow, you’ve got the whole package. So what’s needed really is flexibility and allowing the players to figure things out themselves.”
Living and working in the UK
Taibu will return to the UK next week, where he has been ordinarily resident with his family for nearly 10 years in-between pat-time coaching roles in Asia as well as a spell back home in Zimbabwe as the country’s head of selectors.
“I have my own coaching company, so I do coach whenever I’m not busy,” says Taibu.
“I have been busy for the last four years so I haven’t done a lot of coaching (in the UK), but the company is there. This summer, I’m going to have more time to do more coaching. Of the last nine years I have been in the UK, I probably spent six of those years out of the UK coaching in Bangladesh, Pakistan, PNG and obviously the time I was in Zim for a couple of years. The coaching that I do in the UK is not of any level, I have private lessons so we’re talking about kids that are starting, all the way to professionals. So, look, I’m good at any level. I wouldn’t really know exactly, but there are 40 to 50 kids I coach privately and in the UK that becomes my main occupation.”
Family, and cricket legacy
Taibu’s family has also settled in nicely in the UK, complementing each other in their different occupations.
“Our investment has been on the boys, for them to get a good education, which we have managed to do,” Taibu says.
“TJ is now in his first year in university and Gershom is now about to write his GCSE, which is your ‘O’ Level. So when I look at the boys, I know that we have done well as parents and Loveness, you know, she has graduated from university as well. It is something that I cherish, and it has all happened in the UK. So life in the UK has really been good for us.”
The cricket legacy in the family will however be carried by just one the two Taibu lads, who is turning out to be quite a prodigy.
“My older boy is in university so he is playing university level, but he has decided that he is not going to be a professional cricketer,” says Taibu.
“He did try for Zimbabwe Under-19 and wasn’t successful, so I think when that happened, he decided not to go professional. So he is going in the line of business, he will take over the businesses that I have as soon as he finishes his university so that I can really enjoy my coaching. The younger one, Gershom, has really taken after me. When I was 14, I wasn’t playing as well as he is doing. He is already playing first team premier cricket and at 14 he’s keeping as well. I only started playing first team premier cricket at 15, so he is definitely playing better than I am and he is doing well. And if he keeps his head down, I think there is something that can happen there.”
Taibu’s last engagement with cricket in Zimbabwe didn’t particularly end on a good note, but he isn’t ruling out any future involvement with the game back home.
“Zimbabwe is my country, I mean, right now I’m in Zimbabwe, I’ve come for a few business meetings as well as a wedding,” says Taibu.
“I’m always keeping an eye on things in Zimbabwe and I think it’s inevitable that I’m going to be part of things at some level.”
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