How happy are you that Afghanistan has been sent packing their bags?

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Kriterion_BD
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Re: How happy are you that Afghanistan has been sent packing their bags?

Post by Kriterion_BD »

TapsC wrote:
Fri Mar 09, 2018 5:46 am
It really is a 50/50 For me. Yes I am happy because the heat will leave Zimbabwe for a bit. Imagine that was us people would have been calling for us to lose full membership. Afghanistan have it easy. Every time we lose to a smaller nation cricket wise it's a train smash and people start questioning our ability. This is a big wake up call to them. International cricket at test nation level is brutal. For so long they were the best of the rest now they are current the worst team amongst the best. It's not easy.

We get hammered every year. Teams like India basically send their C team to play us. It's painful if you really think about it. All we want to do is compete. We have been through a lot. From Hayden destroying us with 380, getting bowled out for 34 and the boxing day test last year. Then these guys come around have a few good years and suddenly people think Rashid Khan and co are world beaters. It's a long journey. Wasn't Ray Price ranked number one at some point? Andy Flower too?

Anyway my point is that Afghanistan have a long way to go before they can really consider themselves a quality team. Yes we go through a lot but we have beaten 9 out of the 11 test teams in the last 5 years in one format or the other yet we are still minnows. Only S.A. and England who we don't play at all are not on that list. Let them achieve that or Bangladesh level success first then they can positively say they are beyond us. This has brought them back to reality. This whole meteoric rise nonsense stops now. They have to earn their place over time like everybody else.
Yeah I think a lot of people - myself included - have hyped the Afghans up. Granted they aren't this bad either, but thats how you get an average of two extremes.

You are spot on, Afghanistan will now be going from best of rest to worst of the best. That is a hard transition and a steep learning curve. It will also not just be how much talent they unearth on the field. How smoothly and competently the ACB runs things will also play a huge, possibly biggest factor. Bangladesh have presently hit a wall beyond which they cannot climb unless and until they have a massive overhaul of their entire cricket system. Pakistan have been mediocre across formats for well over a decade now. Its not easy.
From a tournament perspective which is the most important. It's hard to tell. Now that the Netherlands have also basically been shown the door barring a miracle It might not matter whether Afghanistan is there or not. If things go as expected it's a shootout between us and Ireland. Ireland have the advantage now because in the super 6 stage they will have 1 tough game whilst we will have 2. The only way it balances out is if we beat Scotland and Hong Kong. Then the pressure will be on Ireland as we will have to win 2 games whilst they will have to win all 3.
One of WI/IRE will have 4 points, the other 2 going into the super 6.

ZIM if they run the table will have 4, but if they lose to Scotland or HK will likely only take 2 points forward.

Thus one of WI/IRE are almost guaranteed to qualify. For ZIM, the game vs SCO is a pseudo-knock out. The game vs IRE is a pseudo knock out. The game vs WI is a pseudo knock out. Possibly the game vs HK as well.

But I still predict that WI/IRE may still very well slip up themselves. But that means ZIM may slip up - as they almost did vs AFG. But Scotland could slip up vs HK. Its literally the most excruciatingly designed tournament in the history of tournaments.
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Googly
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Re: How happy are you that Afghanistan has been sent packing their bags?

Post by Googly »

I don’t understand our FB administrators allowing the gutter commentary. Our fans seem overwhelmed and barely react. If a white guy said one tenth of that shit there would be a jambanja here second to none.
Of all the fans world wide our Zim lads are the least up to speed about cricket.
The sub continent guys have invaded all the good cricket sites. Following this Warner De Kock dog show shows up some feral commentary from some of the Aussies as well.
Their next test is going to be an ugly affair. That Buffalo Park crowd are going to give him some reception. I guarantee the organizers will be busy taking down some ugly banners.
There was a really good site called Association Cricket Lounge that we all followed, but that has been ruined. The poms aren’t much better either. I just want some informed banter about cricket and there’s always at least one c^*t that fucks it up.

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Re: How happy are you that Afghanistan has been sent packing their bags?

Post by sloandog »

Googly wrote:
Fri Mar 09, 2018 7:58 am
I don’t understand our FB administrators allowing the gutter commentary. Our fans seem overwhelmed and barely react. If a white guy said one tenth of that shit there would be a jambanja here second to none.
Of all the fans world wide our Zim lads are the least up to speed about cricket.
The sub continent guys have invaded all the good cricket sites. Following this Warner De Kock dog show shows up some feral commentary from some of the Aussies as well.
Their next test is going to be an ugly affair. That Buffalo Park crowd are going to give him some reception. I guarantee the organizers will be busy taking down some ugly banners.
There was a really good site called Association Cricket Lounge that we all followed, but that has been ruined. The poms aren’t much better either. I just want some informed banter about cricket and there’s always at least one c^*t that fucks it up.
Yea I had a few moments last night on the 'Zimbabwe Cricket' Facebook page, I couldn't help myself so had a volley back at some comments. Annoys me so much. They need to somehow be blocked, or at least request to join. Make it a private page

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Re: How happy are you that Afghanistan has been sent packing their bags?

Post by foreignfield »

This make it all the more important that we keep ZCF the place it is, and the occasional trolls get the boot.

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eugene
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Re: How happy are you that Afghanistan has been sent packing their bags?

Post by eugene »

Kriterion_BD wrote:
Fri Mar 09, 2018 7:34 am
eugene wrote:
Fri Mar 09, 2018 4:06 am

Whenever I watch hockey or cricket matches involving any subcontinent nations the comments are just diabolical. Basically every video on youtube of an Indian or Pakistan cricketer is littered with India v Pakistan crap, people wanting to rape each others women, etc. I know many Indians in the USA and eat at many Indian restaurants and never have any problems with people here. I guess the internet brings out the worst characters?

I would however love to visit India one day, I am particularly obsessed with the Indian rail network.
By and large people in the USA are far more civilized. This is actually poorly correlated with education, IMO. You can be well educated and still be an idiot bigot, and you can be a humble shoe shiner and still be a wise open-minded person.

America does a very good job of welcoming immigrants - Trump and his populist rhetoric notwithstanding. In the United States, most immigrant groups assimilate totally within a generation. Pakistanis, Afghans, and Bangladeshis being predominantly muslim don't assimilate in the same proportion, but they generally attain a hybrid state in which they blend American values/patriotism with their traditional mores.

By contrast Europe from what I have heard is far less tolerant and hence we a much bigger problem there when it comes to assimilating minority and immigrant groups. Much bigger problem relative to the US.
Racism in Europe is a much bigger problem. Just see all the racist chanting at football games in Italy and Eastern European countries. This would never happen anywhere in the USA.
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Kriterion_BD
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Re: How happy are you that Afghanistan has been sent packing their bags?

Post by Kriterion_BD »

eugene wrote:
Fri Mar 09, 2018 8:52 pm

Racism in Europe is a much bigger problem. Just see all the racist chanting at football games in Italy and Eastern European countries. This would never happen anywhere in the USA.
Happened in many if not most Trump rallies + Charlottesville and a host of other places. But thats not the point. Idiots abound everywhere. Bangladesh has people that burn whole villages to the ground based on a single facebook status. India has mobs that lynch people on the mere suscipicion that they have a McDonald's double cheeseburger in their bag. Less said about Pakistan and Afghanistan the better. Europe and by extension Australia are socially liberal...they endorsed same-sex marriage, prostitution, marijuana, and abortion rights years and perhaps decades before the US did. But they aren't as welcoming to outsiders, particularly those who cannot assimilate 100%.

It may be because the US never colonized 80% of the rest of humanity (apart from the African slave trade) and because the US has always been a mixture of various national subgroups: Anglo-Saxons at first, then later Italians, Germans, Scandanavians, Russians, etc. Americans have a lot more of the "you do you" philosophy. Of course the media alarmists are an exception, but in the US there is a significant half of the population that is carrying the entire country forward - slow though it sometimes seems.

Then again Macron's victory in France and Merkel's policies in Germany shows that perhaps Europe too may be following the American model of cohesion and tolerance more that we tend to think.
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foreignfield
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Re: How happy are you that Afghanistan has been sent packing their bags?

Post by foreignfield »

You can't lump all of Europe together like that. The continent is very diverse, Eastern Europe is a totally different cattle of fish: What you see there is an old-fashinoned sort of xenophobia and racism in absence of any real contact with the "other". Communism has cut them off from the liberal and democratic developments in Western Europe for decades, and it seems they are now starting back where the catastrophic first half of the 20th century all began before World War I.

But one thing European nations have in common, and what sets them apart from the U.S. is that Europe has been the breeding ground of the national state and nationalism as an ethnic concept from the 19th century onwards, again especially in the originally multi-ethnic middle and eastern part of the continent, but also in Germany and southern countries. France has always had a more open concept of nationality, while the Scandinavians were isolated enough to build cohesive and largely egalitarian societies without the need to create the image of a hostile or dangerous other. Britain is again different due to it's island status.

Therefore most European societies expect more integration into the national culture from immigrants without being as welcoming as immigrant societies like the U.S. and Canada. The rise of racism in the most liberal and inclusive societies like France or the Netherlands is all the more worrying, but it is also a reaction to the level of immigration and the real problems they cause. It's been a great humanitarian gesture to welcome a million Syrian refugees in Germany, and I hope for the best. Immigration patterns in Western Europe are very different to the U.S., and please don't forget that he political spectrum in the U.S. is leaning far more to the right than in Western Europe, mainstream Democrats are about on par with the German conservatives of Merkle, folks of normal Republican ink are consired to be on the far right. Half the population of the U.S. believes Bernie Sanders' to be a commie, in Western Europe or Scandinavia he's in the middle of the mainstream. It's also a question of perception: If a quarter of the stuff Trump and his supporters are trumpeting about was said in a German election campaign by the coming German chancellor, the UN would already be pondering an invasion to stop the Nazis in their stride.

Kriterion_BD
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Re: How happy are you that Afghanistan has been sent packing their bags?

Post by Kriterion_BD »

foreignfield wrote:
Sat Mar 10, 2018 9:05 am
You can't lump all of Europe together like that. The continent is very diverse, Eastern Europe is a totally different cattle of fish: What you see there is an old-fashinoned sort of xenophobia and racism in absence of any real contact with the "other". Communism has cut them off from the liberal and democratic developments in Western Europe for decades, and it seems they are now starting back where the catastrophic first half of the 20th century all began before World War I.

But one thing European nations have in common, and what sets them apart from the U.S. is that Europe has been the breeding ground of the national state and nationalism as an ethnic concept from the 19th century onwards, again especially in the originally multi-ethnic middle and eastern part of the continent, but also in Germany and southern countries. France has always had a more open concept of nationality, while the Scandinavians were isolated enough to build cohesive and largely egalitarian societies without the need to create the image of a hostile or dangerous other. Britain is again different due to it's island status.

When I say Europe I basically mean the large Western European democracies (UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain) as well as the smaller BeNeLux nations and I guess Denmark/Sweden/Norway as well. When I say minorities I'm mostly talking about the recent immigrants mostly from Asian and African nations. I understand there may be pockets of Lithuanian minorities in Spain as an example, but I'm not really talking about that.
The rise of racism in the most liberal and inclusive societies like France or the Netherlands is all the more worrying, but it is also a reaction to the level of immigration and the real problems they cause. It's been a great humanitarian gesture to welcome a million Syrian refugees in Germany, and I hope for the best. Immigration patterns in Western Europe are very different to the U.S., and please don't forget that he political spectrum in the U.S. is leaning far more to the right than in Western Europe, mainstream Democrats are about on par with the German conservatives of Merkle, folks of normal Republican ink are consired to be on the far right. Half the population of the U.S. believes Bernie Sanders' to be a commie, in Western Europe or Scandinavia he's in the middle of the mainstream. It's also a question of perception: If a quarter of the stuff Trump and his supporters are trumpeting about was said in a German election campaign by the coming German chancellor, the UN would already be pondering an invasion to stop the Nazis in their stride.
This entire refugee issue is a disaster and the Muslim world saw it coming when they pleaded with GW Bush not start a war in Iraq. Now there are several million refugees and the humanitarian and societal problems that go with it. The saving grace is that the US has an ocean keeping us relatively insulated.

Therefore most European societies expect more integration into the national culture from immigrants without being as welcoming as immigrant societies like the U.S. and Canada.
Absolutely. There seems to be a looming clash of civilizations in Europe and many theories abound as to how it will turn out. Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum (a conservative American) has interesting takes.
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Re: How happy are you that Afghanistan has been sent packing their bags?

Post by ZIMDOGGY »

When Europe (or anyone) takes in mass refugees there is literally no benefit to that nation. Only costs and burden (unless these new arrivals somehow hit the ground running). It is only done out of obligatory humanitarian purposes.

Given the above, the problem then occurs is if the new arrivals come across as ungrateful and problematic.

This then naturally leads to an angry reaction from a big sector of the host population. Rightly so. The feeling is that we opened our doors to you and you trashed the place.

Then when there is denial, or their actions are excused, or flipped back on the aforementioned big sector I mentioned for saying so out loud (all this is where the left wing liberals go totally wrong) the natural reaction from this sector is more anger that manifests into hatred and racism.
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strikerlube
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Re: How happy are you that Afghanistan has been sent packing their bags?

Post by strikerlube »

So the answer by you guys is that we’re happy they’re packing their bags but none of us want Shahzad in our country? :D

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