Has supporting Zimbabwe cricket stopped being fun?

[tawac]

I also reckon cricket these days is now more of the T20 stuff and that's one format we just no good at and hence goes the fun with it. For some reason ZC just doesn't see any worth in investing more in the format with hardly more than a handful of games locally. The NPL was interesting when most squads were at full strength. We should have more of that.

[zimbos_05]

We'll never stop supporting Zim. We will always live for this team, but yes, it has definitely gotten less fun being a supporter of this team.

The team we love, the sport we love is some ZANU PF idiots political play thing. He doesn't care about the fans or the game, so yes, it has become a lot less fun.

Thos times in the 90's and early 00's were the best thing.

[jw2]

I also reckon cricket these days is now more of the T20 stuff and that's one format we just no good at and hence goes the fun with it. For some reason ZC just doesn't see any worth in investing more in the format with hardly more than a handful of games locally. The NPL was interesting when most squads were at full strength. We should have more of that.

ZC tell me they plan to expand the domestic T20 competition this coming season. But we are still waiting for the fixture list.

[sam_ahm]

Cricket in general has become boring tbh and there seems to be no going back.

There are barely any strong teams left other than the Big 3 and the results now are very predictable. I'm sick of watching lot of white ball international cricket being played with 'B' teams and looked upon as a practice for world events, there is no seriousness at all.

Test cricket is heavily biased. The fact that Eng have played 17 tests so far in WTC and RSA have played only 6 shows what crap WTC is. There is also no pathway for Zim, Ire or Afg to make it to the WTC.

Of course the fall of ZC is has contributed to the lack of interest in Zim cricket but even overall my interest in cricket has gone to an all time low. I just don't seem to enjoy it anymore.

[Googly]

Our big annual event is now the T10 where we get to watch most of our players field and the big boss put a chunk of undeclared cash in his pocket.

[eugene]

The joy of supporting Zimbabwe in the 90s and 2000s was seeing us hang tough with the big boys and pick up victories on a regular basis. Beating Pakistan in tests home and away, murdering England at home in 1996/1997, beating India and South Africa at the 1999 CWC, the ODI series win in New Zealand 2000/2001. Now we rarely play anyone other than associates and we still don't win most of the time. I have little interest in seeing us pummel Burkina Faso or Gambia, in fact it is a joke we are even playing them given the huge disparity of funding. So yes, it stopped being fun quite some time ago, probably the turning point for me was failure to qualify for the 2019 CWC after the UAE debacle.

As other have said, in all honesty cricket as a whole has become boring, I watch almost no cricket these days - 20 years ago I watched it all the time. I have zero interest in the T20 leagues and test cricket is treated as second rate outside of the big 3. ODI Cricket has sadly been left to die also.

[Googly]

What's the difference between the teams of yesteryear and the current teams?
If there was a genuine interest (clearly there isn't) in trying to improve the cricket and add some local interest there's an easy and interesting experiment-
Make Rangers a franchise with Brent and Houghton as coaches.
That way we could see whether over the hill white players, kids and and others not up for national consideration are any good.
If the national selectors are any good Rangers shouldn't win a game. If they finish top 2 national selectors should resign and return the perks they've received over the years.

[mnelson68]

This would never happen , these muppets don't want to be held accountable.

[andrea lanzoni]

I live some thousands miles away, so I can't say about local support.
I watch Zimbabwe squad international matches whenever it is available on the web.

I'm disappointed that domestic leagues are on YouTube through one single camera which covers only the pitch. This discourages viewership: after a while I lose interest in watching a match where half of actions are not visible.

I posted in the past that a two cameras video recording does not have an impeding cost. Something like most English Counties do, which is nothing sophisticated at all.
Whatever the (local) cost, Zimbabwe domestic leagues can definetely generate some viewership in indian subcontinent and Britain thanks to YouTube.
Domestic leagues already exist and may generate hours and hours of live streaming on YouTube.
Presently it is like producing energy to simply deplete it. I wonder someone may deem it 'sensible'.

At a ridicolous cost First Class matches may be then also easily edited in condensed 15 minutes footage, something which could be appealing to "non core" viewers.

Having some viewership leads automatically to have advertisement; you don't need to seek advertisers, neither locally or abroad: it is the YouTube platform itself that drives advertisement to videos with some viewership.

So from the (usual) catch22 of complaining for low interest, unacceptable video footage, etc. there could be a virtuous approach to provide a minimum decent YouTube broadcasting and having, with no marketing effort, viewership and ads which cover the costs.

[Pat_Bee]

They did improve last season to be fair; Union Hardware and Plascon adverts bringing in advertisement revenue and those dodgy 1990s style graphics for fours and sixes even slow motion replays they didn’t bother removing the sound from so you’d hear a deep, drawn out HHHHHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWZZZZZZZZZZZAAAAAAAAAATTTTTTTTT?!