One perplexing thing is that Associates have the best chance of success in T20, yet it is Zimbabwe's worst format. We have almost nobody who can take on the bowlers and play aggressively.
You can't be surprised when players like Gumbie get selected to play t20 cricket. Whilst he is a good batsman he simply isn't suited to that format like many others that get picked. It took them over 12 months to finally give Campbell an opportunity, they are clueless.
Campbell mentioned of course
Very little to do with selection, and once again everything to do with the people running our game.
Cricket here is ran by dinosaurs in their 50's and 60's who are stuck in the past and know the square root of fuck all about the game, and are only now, very slowly starting to see the benefits of T20/T10 etc. We are years behind other countries in focusing on shorter formats.
We still play 5 days of domestic T20 cricket per year.
5 days. Let that sink in.
We have a T20 series with India in a few weeks and our guys in national camp are literally currently playing multi-day red-ball training matches in Harare to prepare for it. Inexplicable insanity.
Have the Associates really suddenly gotten better? Or is it a combination of really weird wickets leveling the playing field?
One could argue that the better team should dominate regardless of the conditions, and generally I agree with that theory.
Yeah, other than the associates getting better, I'm sure the bowling friendly pitches have worked in their favor. A lot of these associate teams play on low scoring pitches and in general a low scoring game levels out the playing field because of the low margin between a win and a loss. So it could go either way!
Zimbabwe should not have lost to Uganda, whichever way you look at it, that was a complete disaster.
India v Pakistan tonight, can't remember when was the last time a WC match between the two rival nations was so low profile. Not a lot of talk about it in India, at least from whatever I can see.
Have the Associates really suddenly gotten better? Or is it a combination of really weird wickets leveling the playing field?
One could argue that the better team should dominate regardless of the conditions, and generally I agree with that theory.
They've got a lot better. The actual skills on display by the leading associates most of the time now are very high quality. That didn't often used to be the case.
The leading associates have professionalised a lot. The League 2 thing they have (albeit different format) has helped vastly I think - gives them lots and lots of regular fixtures (as opposed to stop-start, uncertain nature of the old world cricket league divisions of yesteryear) which has allowed them to basically be full-time professional sides. Most of them have fully contracted sides now. 10 years ago most of even the leading associates were part-timers and had other jobs. The Dutch, Nepalese, and most of the Americans and Namibians are full-time now. A lot of these sides have really good coaches now too.
I think the leading Associates have gotten better whilst teams like Zimbabwe, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka have gotten significantly worse (or not really improved their overall skill). Afghanistan have probably improved the most…and the top 8 just get better and better at white ball cricket particularly batting at insane strike rates through innovation but also the mindset of looking to score off every ball.
Only into the 9th over but the India Pakistan game has been awfully low quality so far. Aside from the terrible fielding and multiple missed catches and weird fielding positions from Pakistan, India have somehow got 65 runs on the board seemingly without middling a single delivery so far. Pant has been shocking - how is he not out yet?
Pant just hit 3 beautiful boundaries in a row. Dreadful for the first 20 balls he faced - Pakistan had about 5 chances to get him out. Themselves to blame if he goes on to get a big score.
