Reverse Sweep: The return of legendary John Ward

[Dr_Situ(ZimFanatic)]

John Ward is a name which is not unfamiliar to true Zimbabwean fans. He was my window to the Zimbabwean Cricket when info on Zim matches were scarce to find. He was prompt in replying whenever any fan has any question on ZC and his Zimbabwe Cricket Online (ZCO) on Cricinfo was the most eagerly awaited newsletter for fans.

When Cricinfo sold out to Wisden, they unfortunately had no further time for ZCO and no money to employ him, so ZC employed him on a part-time basis. Unfortunately he was one of the many thrown out by the new regime in 2005, but also among the many invited back again in 2009! "Life in Zimbabwe remains terribly difficult, though, so it is taking me a long time to get back to what I used to do! I don't think Cricinfo was particularly biased in their reporting on the crisis in Zimbabwe cricket - basically it was an awful time with politics and racial issues overwhelming the cricket, but fortunately they seem to have seen sense now and that sort of disastrous chaos won't happen again" he writes in a personal communication to me.

I was searching him all those years and finally thanks to Jeff Murimbechi that i found him again. It was JHunter's post on history of Logan Cup which rekindled the ties with him. I forwarded him eugene's message of having him on the board and i am glad he responded positively:

Thanks, Satendra - glad it helped. Can you give me details of the forum, please, as I presume I will be able to join? Right now I cannot, though, as we have massive internet problems and I am virtually restricted to email - when it is working! This is life in Zimbabwe! But for the time being perhaps you can give my email address on the forum and say people are welcome to contact me about Zimbabwean cricket if they want.

Wow, this is a great news. i invite all the fellow ZCF members to channelise their queries in a structured manner and get the most out of this highly knowledgeable loyal servant of Zim ckt. May i request you to post your queries with John's reply in this topic so that we all can share his experiences.

His email ID is jward@mweb.co.zw. So guys what are you waiting for?

[maehara]

Excellent news! Thanks, Satendra, for touching base with John, and many thanks to John for making himself available.

[Dr_Situ(ZimFanatic)]

Q1. What are your thoughts on Zimbabwe's performance in the world cup? Dr. Situ

John Ward:
Thanks, Satendra. The serious internet problems continue, but I do have an emergency access line that will keep me going with emails at least. I will sign in to the forum when the system is finally restored.

Zimbabwe in the World Cup I thought were rather disappointing. Even if we had played at our best, though, we would probably not have beaten the established Test nations, but we could have come closer. The Sean Ervine fiasco reflects badly on him. There is a lot of speculation here that Hampshire got hold of him and persuaded him to break the contract he had signed, for their own selfish reasons. It is very sad that people like him and Graeme Hick saw fit to withdraw from Zimbabwe cricket and obviously feel they have no debt of gratitude to pay to the country that nurtured their talent and gave them the best preparation it could for big cricket. Trevor Penney when he left at least returned in the winters, bringing plenty of kit with him, and paid back as much as he could by playing and coaching here, in contrast to the rank ingratitude shown by the other two.

I don't feel the team selected was the best we could have sent. If Sachin Tendulkar has a run of low scores, India do not drop him from the World Cup. Hamilton Masakadza is obviously not the great player Sachin is, but like Sachin he is the best batsman in the country. Coach Alan Butcher finds no fault with his attitude, so I feel Hamilton should have been in the team anyway - as they say, form is temporary but class is permanent. It's not as if his replacements had any success. Also, as has been obvious from their performances in the Logan Cup while the World Cup was being played, bowlers like Keegan Meth and Tendai Chatara would surely have done a better job than Tinashe Panyangara, for example - a good persistent workhorse but he hasn't fully regained his lost years.

Also many of the team who were selected did not play up to their potential. They are not yet up to the standard of the Test nations, but they should have done rather better than they did. Elton Chigumbura's poor form all season has much to do with this, as he can be devastating with the bat in particular, as he showed when he won us the two warm-up matches in the T20 World Cup in the West Indies last year. Not having been with the team, it's difficult to give reasons and nobody was able to give me really convincing ones. Inexperience is only a partial excuse, though that was most clear when our batsmen had to face the Australian pace attack and Umar Gul, who were beyond their present experience.

Domestic cricket in Zimbabwe has gone really well this season, with a great deal of talent evident, but still a general lack of cricketing nous among the players, mainly the result of the dearth of experienced players, most of whom were lost in 2004. I am convinced there is more depth of talent in Zimbabwe cricket than there has ever been before, but this hasn't yet translated into the performances in international cricket. It will probably be a long hard haul before we can become really competitive again, but at least there is a lot of raw talent out there. -- John

[hhm]

Thanks for the feedback Dr_Situ. Keep it up. You might want to post the rest of the questions you posed to John as it appears you had a Q&A type conversation with him. We wouldn't want to ask him the same questions again when he does eventually join the forum. Interesting observations made by John though, and it's good to see that he shares some common views with most on the forum.

[Dr_Situ(ZimFanatic)]

Thanks for the feedback Dr_Situ. Keep it up. You might want to post the rest of the questions you posed to John as it appears you had a Q&A type conversation with him. We wouldn't want to ask him the same questions again when he does eventually join the forum. Interesting observations made by John though, and it's good to see that he shares some common views with most on the forum.

I donot have a Q-A type conversation with him. It was just that to avoid confusion who is actually posting i used Q1 and the person who asked. Anybody can ask him question but ofcourse it depends upon his availability of time. My idea is to share whosoever-communicate-with-him here so tht we all can read his views till he joins the forum. Cricinfo is still in recession phase and who wants to pay a Zimbabwean correspondent so it's really nice of John to come out of hibernation and agreeing to share his views

[bayhaus]

Nice one Dr_Situ. I haqve a suggestion that people can send him questions and each week or fortnight he responds to three of the most interesting like the Bowl@Boycs type of set up. I am looking forward to hearing more from him. He seems like a level head!

[JHunter]

Excellent news Dr. Situ.

Did you tell him thanks for me and give him those 2 links (one for the Jonty Winch book - the 1983 edition and the 1994 edition; the other for the reference to the 1972/1973 Logan Cup being a one day competition)?

Hope he gets full internet connection soon.

I don't think Cricinfo was particularly biased in their reporting on the crisis in Zimbabwe cricket

Wow, he's much kinder than I would be. I'm West Indian and I'm fairly sure cricinfo is heavily biased in favour of the four biggest countries (by revenue) - Australia, India, Pakistan and South Africa. I've seen cricinfo's coverage of cricket in the WI, Pakistan, Zimbabwe and Bangladesh and I can almost guarantee that in a lot of cases there was biased coverage. For instance I can recall two instances which showed that cricinfo's staff in general (a) know very little about the places they are covering and (b) only look for sensational headlines and heated discussions. The first concerns an article on cricinfo about the West Indies women's team. They quite boldly announced that a new player had been capped for the women's team and that she was from.....the Dominican Republic. Now I can understand if some people would confuse the Spanish speaking Dominican Republic which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti on one hand and the English speaking, former British colony of the Commonwealth of Dominica in the eastern Caribbean on the other hand. But most Americans would know the Dominican Republic (through baseball) and would know "Dominica" is not it. One would assume that cricinfo's staff since they are dedicated to covering cricket and since most cricket is played in only 10 countries, would know something about those 10 nations. Well the player in question was actually from Dominica (she didn't even have a Spanish name so I don't know how they figured she was from the Dominican Republic). They eventually changed it though after someone sent in a comment pointing out the error though I wished nobody had informed so their ignorance would remain on display. In the other case I remember at the start of the 2008 financial crisis a number of countries were losing domestic sponsors. In particular I recall that England lost some sponsors and New Zealand in particular lost their one sponsor (State Insurance) who gave money (and got naming rights) for NZ's first-class, list A and twenty20 competitions. I think Sri Lanka also lost one or two domestic sponsors at the time. Now here's the odd bit. In all those cases cricinfo simply had an article outlining what happened and left it at that. When West Indies similarly lost it's domestic sponsors (like New Zealand) cricinfo somehow felt it necessary to append a question above the comments section and have the article open for comment. The question they asked was if the loss of sponsorship was the fault of the WICB and if the board should resign. Naturally following such a loaded question which gives readers the implication that it was the board's fault most of the comments were calling for the board to resign and generally throwing pretty nasty comments). Then the sponsor that West Indies lost came out about a week or so later and explained that it was reviewing all of it's sponsorships (not just with the WICB) and implied that they had to trim some of them but that it had no ill will towards the WICB and would still sponsor club cricket in the territories where its products were sold widely. After that cricinfo took down the question and comments on its original article (I guess once it was clear that the question was just foolish speculation it was a bit embarrassing to keep it up).

Zimbabwe in the World Cup I thought were rather disappointing. Even if we had played at our best, though, we would probably not have beaten the established Test nations, but we could have come closer.

I'm pretty sure Zimbabwe will recover in time. I've been hoping that Zimbabwe won't face any more major problems in the future.

The Sean Ervine fiasco reflects badly on him. There is a lot of speculation here that Hampshire got hold of him and persuaded him to break the contract he had signed, for their own selfish reasons. It is very sad that people like him and Graeme Hick saw fit to withdraw from Zimbabwe cricket and obviously feel they have no debt of gratitude to pay to the country that nurtured their talent and gave them the best preparation it could for big cricket. Trevor Penney when he left at least returned in the winters, bringing plenty of kit with him, and paid back as much as he could by playing and coaching here, in contrast to the rank ingratitude shown by the other two.

We should form a club. I know how he feels. It's the same way with quite a few West Indies players (some current and some past). For instance Holding as far as I know is only satisfied with doing commentary work and criticizing WI cricket but I've never heard of him lifting a finger to help the situation. His excuse is that he would never associate with the (current) board but I'm sure he would never associate with any WI board or territorial board; in any case it is a weak excuse as his former teammate Walsh runs annual cricket clinics for teenagers all over the place (from his own funds and with the help of some sponsors) and does so without associating with WI board or the territorial (Jamaica) board. I'm sure Holding gives advice to current players, but then I'm sure Walsh does too as do other past players and you have to wonder how helpful Holding's advice would be if his general attitude is "oppose administrators".

Domestic cricket in Zimbabwe has gone really well this season, with a great deal of talent evident, but still a general lack of cricketing nous among the players, mainly the result of the dearth of experienced players, most of whom were lost in 2004. I am convinced there is more depth of talent in Zimbabwe cricket than there has ever been before, but this hasn't yet translated into the performances in international cricket. It will probably be a long hard haul before we can become really competitive again, but at least there is a lot of raw talent out there.

Yep. Rome wasn't built in a day. The important thing is that Zimbabwe (as well as Bangladesh, Pakistan and West Indies) all have boards that are attempting or have put in place systems that will hopefully lift the standard of cricket domestically which in turn will translate into better performances in international cricket in the future. The impatience of most fans (or rather those who comment on message boards and on cricinfo) and cricinfo staff with the troubles that face some boards (especially the more cash-strapped boards) is puzzling in light of the fact that they all claim to like cricket and cricket (especially test cricket) is a game of patience.

[Conant]

I don't think Cricinfo was particularly biased in their reporting on the crisis in Zimbabwe cricket

Wow, he's much kinder than I would be. I'm West Indian and I'm fairly sure cricinfo is heavily biased in favour of the four biggest countries (by revenue) - Australia, India, Pakistan and South Africa. I've seen cricinfo's coverage of cricket in the WI, Pakistan, Zimbabwe and Bangladesh and I can almost guarantee that in a lot of cases there was biased coverage.

To be honest that Steven Price wasn't doing Zimbabwe cricket any favours

[eugene]

I miss reading the Zimbabwe Cricket Online articles. They were always well written with interesting interviews with players and coaches. These days we just get reports from soneone sitting at a desk in Johannesburg it seems. It will be great if John Ward is able to become an active member of the forum.

[hhm]

I haqve a suggestion that people can send him questions and each week or fortnight he responds to three of the most interesting like the Bowl@Boycs type of set up.

Not a bad idea. At least that way the ZCF administrators can moderate between John and members of the forum. It can have a positive in the sense that such an esteemed cricket brain like his on Zim matters will not have his views watered down or his value gradually eroded.