The day ZC really feels they're answerable to journalists and by extension the public we will make some progress. What they're only currently trying to do is bullshit us and nobody is buying into it. No hard questions are ever asked.
Here's a good one for Larry, who was happy to announce High performance centres are being built in all the provinces. An indoor facility is not a high performance centre. It's only one of those if you get a world class bowling and batting coach in there with videos, bowling machines, multiple machine balls, cricket balls, merlins, a gym, electricity, different mats and good enough players to justify the term high, as opposed to low, so no we won't be seeing multiple high performance centres. At best maybe finally a genuine Chigumbura Academy. They'll have to be guarded 24 hours a day from theft and vandalism because Zimby's are reining world champions. The devil is in the detail.
We did actually play a lot of cricket this last year. Unfortunately a lot of the club and NPL games are not a high enough standard to benefit the better players, but the odd game definitely pits good players against each other.
The disheartening thing for me is the lack of cricketing knowledge amongst the general public.
A lot of folk cracked into Wellie, who's a really good cricketer and a top bloke. They don't realize how tough international cricket is and how good some of these players are. There are levels and then there are levels. Maru and Wes came in for similar treatment. Again both quality cricketers, but just currently missing that last thing to make them real good. Who knows exactly what it is? A really strong mind? A bit of luck? A tiny bit more skill? More practice? Less practice? They may get it together next month, next year or never? There's no single thing, it's a combination of things and there's no generic way of imparting that knowledge. 99% of coaches all say the same shit that everyone has heard multiple times. Only a small handful of guys can move up to that level.
Whats infuriating ZC and a number of others is that the general perception is that whites are better cricketers and as soon as you include them we'll get immediate results. That's obviously not true, but it's what has kicked the countrywide discontent off.
What is true is that if we kept Houghton and Brent in the loop, included guys like BT and Tinker and got some better administration we'd be in a much better place and there would be a great deal more accountability and professionalism. We'd make immediate progress. We'd make further progress without Mutendira and Co, they just have to go. Everybody is sick of their bias in all selections from U12 and up.
They're claiming no quota (which is mostly not true) but neglect to tell you they killed cricket here by age group quota for the last 30 years!! They're not fixing the damage from that, we're doomed. Now we have to talk about this bullshit grass roots thing that has no chance of meaningful traction other than handing out tee shirts and caps for photo ops.
Raza predictably downplayed NPL
, give credit where it's due for Rangers beating 3 very strong sides loaded with pros and international cricketers, yourself included. You came in to win the final and got smacked, the standard couldn't have been that bad The Rangers thing gave some people PTSD and they never once played with a full strength side
7 or 8 decent white guys and 4 of their mates in Rangers beats any franchise team here 7 out of 10 times in any format day or night. The only people seeing colour are ZC and a handful of others, for whatever their reasons, but it doesn't change the fact that a full strength Rangers side beats everybody. It needs Dion, Maru and Macheka though. After methodically chasing whites from cricket for 30 years and dismantling all the structures they created and with only 7 pro whites left we find ourselves in a not dissimilar position to 30 years ago, except the whites are not as good as they once were and neither are the blacks. Everyone has suffered, except Admin, they're richer than any white administration that has ever been.
As far as the white cricketers thing goes we've had a history of the white guys generally being better batsmen. You see it here and in SA. There's nothing more to that than they usually start a lot younger and get much better coaching and equipment. They also usually come from a long line of cricketers who play garden cricket against each other, a much higher standard of school cricket and live breathe and sleep the sport. Black families have never had that cricket culture as a general rule and unfortunately its all but dead in the white community here as well. Thanks ZC, bloody well done!!
Indians play street cricket and pay some poor fucker 1 rupee to throw balls for hours a day to some prodigy. When Milton's brother and Matsi's son come of age they're probably going to be phenomenal. They've had the same start that hundreds of white kids had 30 years ago and we know they've got the genetics.
Anyway that's my response to what I heard tonite. It was interesting.
