Enock Muchinjo's article 1: SRC's historical role in ZC mess

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CrimsonAvenger
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Enock Muchinjo's article 1: SRC's historical role in ZC mess

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https://www.theindependent.co.zw/2018/0 ... -problems/
WE were tucked in a small corner of the Sports and Recreation Commission (SRC) boardroom in Harare, the tightly-knit Zimbabwean cricket press corps, waiting for the big announcement.

It was January 2006, and being the beginning of a brand new year — in a country consumed by overwhelming despair — hope was pretty much all you had.

But on that particular day, 12 years ago, everything else happening all around us at that time — the record-breaking hyperinflation, worsening economic hardships and the turmoil then ravaging the political landscape of our nation — were concerns for another day, another platform.

As we anxiously waited to be addressed, Zimbabwean cricket — which had now reached a breaking point — was the biggest concern for all of us in the room.

What was Gibson Mashingaidze, the SRC chairman, going to tell us? Was the new year going to bring relief to a game facing its worst crisis throughout its century-old existence in this country?

Hope was that the SRC, the country’s sports regulatory body, would at long last move in to stamp its authority and respond to clarion calls for drastic measures against those accused of running down a once prosperous national sport.

Two to three years before, we sat in that SRC boardroom, Zimbabwe cricket had been riding on a wave of frequent success story after another.

The national side was regularly competing admirably with the world’s best teams, and occasionally defeating them.

Bank accounts recorded a clean bill of health, and everything else was going according to script.

But then came the rebel white players saga in 2004 and all hell broke loose.

Nearly two years later, when the hardliners in Zimbabwe Cricket (ZC) were so determined to divert attention from themselves, they reached for the race card.

But what a blow it was for them when the new young black-dominated national team — led by the very daring captain Tatenda Taibu, a man who to this today swears by the truth — also found the courage to speak out against the leadership of the game.

ZC chairman Peter Chingoka, a fine gentleman who intimately knows the game, one of the earliest black people in the country to play it, was being asked, with all due respect, to step down and pave way for new beginnings.

A very good fight was being fought at that time within and outside the structures of ZC, and very knowledgeable people were being lined-up to eventually take over the management of the game should the likes of the SRC acted in a manner seen as appropriate by all and sundry at that time.

One was Qhubekani Nkala, the competent and well-respected cricket operations manager of ZC, a chartered accountant by profession, who had been earmarked to become ZC’s managing director in the post-disturbances period.

Q, as he was known by all, had been a gifted schoolboy cricketer at Falcon College in his early days and, as an employee of ZC, he openly and fearlessly took a stance against the deteriorating situation in the organisation.

But he was an accomplished professional who had other lucrative avenues open to him, so unlike many other good ZC-employed guys, whose voices were supressed, Nkala could take on the system without fearing victimisation.

There were other upstanding members of the cricketing community in that struggle, the likes of pre-Independence former national team stalwarts Richie Kaschula and Ray Gripper as well as the firebrand Macsood “Max” Ebrahim and Charlie Robertson.

Alongside them were the ex-black players of the late 1980s and early 1990s, Ethan Dube and Crispen Tsvarai — successful professionals too in their own right who were seen as more than capable of administrative roles in the game, and whose names were being put forward to the likes of the SRC and ICC to form some kind of ZC interim committee. So there was an air of expectation and great curiosity when Mashingaidze, a top-serving officer in the ranks of the military, stepped into the room, clutching files of documents on both sides.

Slightly on the short side, but still as fit as any man of his age could be — he must have been in his 60s at that time — Mashingaidze was not keen on taking much of our time. Public speaking clearly not his forte, it took him less than 10 minutes to announce he had dismissed the entire ZC board, and retaining Chingoka as the chairman.

The biggest shocker, though, was the composition of the rest of the new board announced by Mashingaidze, which featured hitherto unknown individuals, most of them aging schoolmasters, who soon were being spoken of in less-than-flattering terms when they were not listening — one player remarking how none of the new directors knew the actual side of the bat used to hit a cricket ball.

Remnants of that past are still being felt to this day and quite clearly what the SRC imposed on the game in 2006 has, bit by bit, like slow poison, squeezed the life out of Zimbabwean cricket.

Compilations of evidence of mismanagement and incompetence, from all these years, have been furnished to all relevant bodies, including the SRC.

Yet the SRC — which contributed to the slow death of the game in 2006 — has the gall and temerity to launch an inquiry into cricket, an inquiry to investigate, outrageously, the very arguments used as defence by the ZC administration to shift the blame of the 2019 World Cup disaster.

The SRC now say it will look into allegations of match-fixing and racism — both raised by ZC in desperation following the World Cup debacle — allegations which are, of course, absolute nonsense.

What a slap in the face for the long-suffering Zimbabwean cricket fan.

The SRC, though, surely cannot be allowed to continue abetting horrendous acts against a sport of so much historical importance to this country.

TapsC
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Re: Enock Muchinjo's article 1: SRC's historical role in ZC mess

Post by TapsC »

All these people break bread together. Thats the biggest problem we face as a nation. The elite circle is way too small. They will ultimately look after each other.

Googly
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Re: Enock Muchinjo's article 1: SRC's historical role in ZC mess

Post by Googly »

Is there anybody since independence in any position of authority anywhere in Zimbabwe who is not a corrupt piece of shit thief? If we can find just one person maybe we can ask them to head ZC and beg him not to steal too much.

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grant
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Re: Enock Muchinjo's article 1: SRC's historical role in ZC mess

Post by grant »

Googly wrote:
Fri May 25, 2018 8:58 pm
Is there anybody since independence in any position of authority anywhere in Zimbabwe who is not a corrupt piece of shit thief?
:lol: :lol:

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