Standard of the Zimbabwean First Class competition

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jaybro
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Re: Standard of the Zimbabwean First Class competition

Post by jaybro »

When every side is full strength it's decent, but once the national players are out it's very ordinary. One of the main reasons the old failed national players keep getting picked the domestic comp is very thin on talent ......

What you're probably wanting to know is how these guys will hold up in club cricket in England? Probably have to just speak to the guys on the ground for the best advice most of us just follow the Logan cup via scorecards .....
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sixes fan
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Re: Standard of the Zimbabwean First Class competition

Post by sixes fan »

to be fair and true its shit. first and foremost the coaches only robin brown has the experience to coach our first class the rest are just shit. Standard of players is decreasing day by day, no talented youngsters coming through, i have played with and seen most players like chitumba, handirisi, kunje and it suprises me that these guys even get a chance to play. jongwe was half decent but not good enough and timoni even gets the nerve to play his shit kids. if we dont sort that out first we are not going anywhere

Flakeman
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Re: Standard of the Zimbabwean First Class competition

Post by Flakeman »

This nee ICC guy needs to sort out the glaring issues quickly. Lack of club cricket, garden boy franchise coaches, etc...

I still cant get over the fact that B. Timoni is playing franchise cricket. For all of you who havent seen him play, be very disappointed with this. Nepotism at its finest. He bowls 95 kmh medium up and downers and can hardly hit the ball off the square. He doesnt even play 1st league club cricket.

TapsC
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Re: Standard of the Zimbabwean First Class competition

Post by TapsC »

It's an interesting question with multiple ways of looking at it.overall we have too many problems but I want to look at it from a basic point of view and ask would a full strength MWR side for example be easily rolled over by a club side anywhere in the world over 3 games? How strong is the weakest county second division side and would they easily roll over our strongest domestic side? I personally don't think so. Because we only have 4 sides at full strength our domestic sides would probably have 5 or 6 internationals. You can't take that away.

Just because somebody plays in a stronger domestic circuit does not necessarily make them better than everybody in ours. An extreme example of this would be taking it back to last year when India toured and they were killing us until they changed their bowling attack for the 1st t20. The guys who then opened the bowling were average at best and got slaughtered( I think Rishi Dhawan was one of the names). I would assume they were probably domestic level bowlers.

Overall we are at the bottom of the pile.don't get me wrong with people playing their sons we will never get anywhere.I'm just trying to show a different point of view

zimstarr
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Re: Standard of the Zimbabwean First Class competition

Post by zimstarr »

ljriley90 wrote:
Wed May 17, 2017 1:36 pm
Hi Guys,

Just a quick one.

In comparison where does the standard of the First Class competition in Zimbabwe sit in comparison to other Top 10 ICC ranked competitions?

I'm guessing with the close proximity to South Africa it matches the 3 day Provincial comp they run below the franchises which classed as FC right?

Would we say it's as good as the West Indian and Sri Lankan comp? Surely it's better than the Bangladeshi and Afghan 4 day comps? Although the Afghans are on the up and their 4 day comp is earning FC status it cant be that strong because the guys who play for the international side and A teams are blitzing hundreds every other innings - even the international bowlers...

Just curious. Thanks
Zimbabwe might be the lowest ranked international cricket team that fact can't be disputed but they are still a competitive team they beat Australia and drew with Pakistan no so long ago which shows that there is talent there since there are only 4 franchise teams which means all 4 will have at least 6 or 7 players with international experiance. for other countries the spread of international players is quite scattered as domestic sides from other nations will only have 3 or so international stars hence a match between mashonaland eagles vs essex will be a close match because essex might have only 1 genuinely quick bowler bowling to batsman who have international experiance I don't think the zim domestic comp in terms of talent is equal to or less that a 3 day comp full of guys who are not experienced in sa this comp doesnt have the abdv amla rabada steyn type of quality . The guys who score hundreds in zims domestic comp are mostly international players since there only 4 teams you face the same bowlers quite regularly and generally international players are difficult to dismiss if you're just a domestic bowler with no international experiance

zimstarr
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Re: Standard of the Zimbabwean First Class competition

Post by zimstarr »

Robbo wrote:
Wed May 17, 2017 4:58 pm
I would say it's comparable to top level English club cricket ( ECB Premier leagues) or maybe County 2nd XI. That's just an English comparison though. Not sure how it would stack against Australian grade cricket?
Even cephas zhuwawo is scoring 37 ball 100 in these ecb prem league comps these are amateur level comps

ZIMDOGGY
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Re: Standard of the Zimbabwean First Class competition

Post by ZIMDOGGY »

Robbo wrote:
Wed May 17, 2017 4:58 pm
Not sure how it would stack against Australian grade cricket?
I'm probably one of the better judges of this as one of my best mates (coincidentally a South African) umpires Sydney grade cricket and I hear a lot about it and generally follow it with one lazy eye. I also have a bit of free time before the sharks play the cowboys in half an hour in the NRL.

Firstly I can only comment on the Sydney (nsw) scene as that's my hood.

It's also worth noting that Sydney grade cricket is simply, with ease, the strongest non domestic competition in the world. Nothing gets close.

Even within Australia there's a huge gulf between the Sydney scene and other states grade structures. Sydneys 4th best team would defeat say, tasmanias 4th best in a way you'd expect India to beat Zimbabwe in a test on home soil. Bar a miracle, they won't even be able to compare. If you are wondering why I chose the 4th team is because in these amateur comps politics usually stacks at least one team with the stars.
A friend of mine couldn't crack north Sydney's 5th grade club side, he was full of dumb ambition and moved to Adelaide and slotted into an Adelaide 2nd grade side. That says it all right there.
Every first class Australian team will have players that have been fed from the Sydney scene and gone interstate to look for opportunities. At full state of origin strength, the nsw team would just about be equal to the Aussie test team. Smith, warner, hazelwood, Lyon, Starc, these are all Sydney boys, as were Waugh bros, Michael Clarke, Watson, Haddin and of the recent stars of the past.
If every player could only play for their natural state, you'd have to split the NSW team into three to keep it level.
Sydney grade feeds this production line.

Since I've now established that sydneys grade Comp Is the strongest in the world, and I hope you believe this, it's also worth noting that there's about 18 teams so the talent is slightly diluted in parts.
No Zimbabwean first class team will be able to compete with the top 75 percent of sides in this Comp.

However, there are 1 or 2 teams that simply do not have the talent to compete against the top sides. Financially they have nothing, no sponsors, are usually in non desirable areas and players would rather play 2nd grade at a prestigious inner city team than okay firsts in one of these teams. Selectors don't look at them, no meaningful power connections, nothing. These teams will be beaten by the rhinos and maybe one or two others on their day.

The Zimbabwean national team, would probably be around 10th in this Comp, maybe 8th or 9th realistically if the state and BBL teams have their players called for duty.

Hope that's of use to some People!
Last edited by ZIMDOGGY on Thu May 18, 2017 10:47 am, edited 1 time in total.
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foreignfield
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Re: Standard of the Zimbabwean First Class competition

Post by foreignfield »

I think the fact that we fantasize about a full-strength MWR team (conveniently ignoring that BT will at best hit a few balls during his vacation) as the pinnacle of Zim's domestic scene, and the fact that they never tend to win anything sums it up really: Hardly anyone ever plays at full strength nowadays.

At the onset of franchise cricket a few years ago this was different; and the overseas' pros added extra quality. This has not happened for the last three or four seasons: too much domestic FC cricket is either lost to player strikes, scheduled when the national side is away or otherwise engaged, and too many of our 'star' players find too many excuses to skip matches. Surely the standard has suffered since tose days, when I would have backed the strongest of our franchises to give teams at the bottom of Div 2 of the County Championship a run for their money (in Zim conditions of course).

auszim
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Re: Standard of the Zimbabwean First Class competition

Post by auszim »

i think its an interesting question posed and to me it depends on the quality of the opposition. For example, average player in zim first class structure will never get to see how good he actually is, until he plays against a decent quality opposition on an ongoing basis. For example, Solo plays grade cricket in Australia, however has made international 50s against Bangla in Bangla. Brendan Nash, couldnt crack the Queensland first class side, yet makes the west indian test side and from what i recall has 2 test hundreds and an average over 30...then retires and comes and plays as a professional player in club cricket in aussie. These guys only are as good as those put in front of them.

I agree with zimdoggy, the grade system here is very strong. For example, you can have a First XI captain from a top quality private school at the age of 18, who can play the game, playing in the 3rd or 4ths of grade cricket. As with all countries, australia is no different in where players are identified and earmarked early on so they get the coaching, '2nd chances' but they also have the infrastructure that whilst they are amateurs, is definitely better than the professional cricketers in zim.

For me the fact that you have first class, zim a, international players playing club cricket in the UK, Australia and NZ, and not tearing the world apart, shows the standard.

TapsC
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Re: Standard of the Zimbabwean First Class competition

Post by TapsC »

another way of looking at it is if we were to take the bottom team from county division 2 last year. How would they do playing against the best club sides in Australia? Would they win the competition? Just food for thought.. there are actually multiple ways of looking at this

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