Vanuatu cricket coach top-scores in defeat to Jersey

Vanuatu have lost their opening match in World Cricket League Four, with Jersey cruising to a comfortable seven wicket win in Bangi, Malaysia.

After being put into bat, the Melanesians lost wickets at regular intervals.

Coach Shane Deitz top-scored with 36 on his international debut at the ripe age of 42 and was one of only three Vanuatu players to reach doubles figures as they were dismissed for 104 in the 36th over.

Jelany Chilia bagged an impressive 3 for 30 with the ball but could not stop Jersey easing to their target with seven wickets and almost 19 overs to spare.

The Australian-born Deitz originally retired in 2008 after a decade-long career playing in South Australia and the UK.

He's been coaching Vanuatu since 2014 and said the chance to don the green, red and yellow presented itself when the International Cricket Council revised their residency rules.

"They changed the rule from a four-year resident to a three-year resident in October last year so that's when I all of a sudden became available," he said.

"I'd just had hip replacement surgery in September last year so it was whether my body would be able to cope with the stresses and the training.

"So from December it was coming pretty good and then by January it was feeling really good so I had a crack at trying to make the team and so far so good."

Shane Deitz said he was given no favours in his bid for selection and had to earn his place by convincing Vanuatu's independent selectors.

"We had six internal trial games and a touring team from Australia came over and played. I did alright in all of those - scored over 50 in every game - so sort of had to be picked I guess!"

Shane Deitz emphasised the Vanuatu players have been supportive of his new hybrid role with the team.

"We're a pretty close team and my style of coaching is to be out there and energetic and doing everything anyway - I always did the fitness stuff with the boys anyway," he said.

"I asked them and they said, "we can see benefit for the team if you're involved."

"Particularly in the practice we had being out in the middle with the guys and talking about what would you do, what should we do in this scenario, what's our next target etc," and that's really helped them develop."

Vanuatu won promotion from Division Five in September and are one of six teams vying for two promotion spots to Division Three.

"We're the lowest ranked team here so we've really got nothing to lose. We're just going to come and play the way we want to play and if things go your way you never know what could happen," Deitz said.

"These tournaments are so quick and you've got five major games in seven days so if you can get a good roll on, and one or two players get in form and have a great two or three games in a row, you can really get some momentum and start winning games, which we did last time at the back-end of that competition."

Vanuatu's next match is against hosts Malaysia on Monday, who opened their campaign with a controversial nine-run victory over Uganda, after the African side's final batsmen was adjudged run-out despite replays showing the ball did not hit the wickets.