The stand of Zimbabwean Cricket

The spread of of cricket and its growth to a good level has always been a welcome change for me. A relatively new country takes around 12-15 years before becoming a regular competitor in the test format. This was certainly the case with Sri Lanka who after playing their first WC in 1979, took about 16 years to become one of the top sides on the international stage. Ireland’s showing in the two World Cups so far has been heartening for the same reason, that is, they have been showing signs of good progress in a small period of time.

Unfortunately though, Zimbabwe has not been able to built on to become a major cricketing nation in spite of playing every WC since 1983. After having produced a number of good players, Zimbabwean cricket did not quite take off. In the World Cups(1983-2007), they have managed a success rate of just 17%.

One of the only purple patches that they had was around the time of the 1999 WC in England. Back then, the African nation had likes of Heath Streak, Henry Olanga, Neil Johnson along with Alastair Campbell and Flower brothers. Some others like Andy Blignaut were also useful lads. This fine breed of cricketers helped the nation win 3 games out of 8 that it played(1 – no result). Any Indian cricket fan will not forget the loss to Zimbabwe in that WC. Having seen the team do well during this time, most felt they would show fruitful progress and become a new test side. In fact, it did get test status for a while, but their pathetic performance meant it was taken away later.

Of course, lack of talent was not the only issue. Players and the Zimbabwean board clashed in a tussle after the 2003 WC, which caused an end to the career of classy Andy Flower and speedster Henry Olanga (The ‘death of democracy’ issue). The whole episode showed the poor condition of domestic cricket in the nation. After a while, Tatenda Taibu was given the charge of team, however, threats and internal turbulence led to his resignation as well as retirement from international cricket. Luckily for Zimbabwe, he came back to represent them in 2007.

All in all, Zimbabwean cricket had to fight a lot of setbacks, whether lack of talent or bad dictators like Robert Mugabe. Even after the retirement of the talented generation of the 1999 WC, there have been some good talents like Brendon Taylor, Ray Price, Elton Chigumbura and Craig Ervine. However, Zimbabwe haven’t been able to make a team which is balanced enough to surprise a few teams and cause an upset or two. Not that their batting is absolutely useless, remember they made close to 300 even though it was against Canada. Also, their bowling has a decent spin attack, with World No.5 Ray Price along with Prosper Utseya and young Graeme Cremer. I would think, if they have one more decent fast bowler, they could become a formidable bowling line-up.

Their overall position since the start of the previous decade has declined surely. Yet, new promising talents and improvements in administration give hope to various followers of Zimbabwean cricket that some day, they will not be called underdogs anymore, but be contenders instead. They will probably be going home after a consolation win against the Kenyans, however, the main goal needs to be the long-term development of the team and hopefully return of test status.