Series thread: ZC Twenty20 Tournament

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andy24
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Re: Series thread: ZC Twenty20 Tournament

Post by andy24 »

MAzakadza has bein doin very well in these matches

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Re: Series thread: ZC Twenty20 Tournament

Post by brmtaylor.com admin »

As far as I know, there will be no final, and just 2 remaining matches. Winner will be decided on points and net run rate.

But of course, that could change if Robin Brown wants a final :lol:


Edit: there is a final, 1400 hours local, Final at Harare Sports Club.

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Re: Series thread: ZC Twenty20 Tournament

Post by brmtaylor.com admin »

I think this will make a few people happy :D

http://content-www.cricinfo.com/zimbabw ... 42328.html

Unfortunately the happiness stops there, that is the only scorecard available. At least this was the match where Masakadza scored a hundred, so it is added to his Cricinfo profile, and is a nice boost for his Twenty20 average.

I'm just hoping that in this match (Northerns beat Southerns by 158 runs), Taylor scored 100 :lol:

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Re: Series thread: ZC Twenty20 Tournament

Post by maehara »

Easterns beat Westerns by 7 runs to take the title.

Easterns 142/9 (20 overs; Masakadza 82*, Nyamuzinga 18; Mboyi 3/20, Dabengwa 2/16)
Westerns 135/9 (20 overs; Dabengwa 42, Strydom 38, Ngulube 21; Utseya 2/23, Nyamuzinga 2/24).

No details on ZC's site of the two round-robin stage matches played earlier in the day, but for Westerns to have reached the final, I'd say Westerns beat Northerns, and Southerns beat Centrals.

CricInfo have the usual whine about standards, with the implication that Easterns were allowed to win to show the world that there are still people playing outside Harare & Bulawayo...

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Re: Series thread: ZC Twenty20 Tournament

Post by brmtaylor.com admin »

maehara wrote:Easterns beat Westerns by 7 runs to take the title.

Easterns 142/9 (20 overs; Masakadza 82*, Nyamuzinga 18; Mboyi 3/20, Dabengwa 2/16)
Westerns 135/9 (20 overs; Dabengwa 42, Strydom 38, Ngulube 21; Utseya 2/23, Nyamuzinga 2/24).

No details on ZC's site of the two round-robin stage matches played earlier in the day, but for Westerns to have reached the final, I'd say Westerns beat Northerns, and Southerns beat Centrals.

CricInfo have the usual whine about standards, with the implication that Easterns were allowed to win to show the world that there are still people playing outside Harare & Bulawayo...
I think it is quite clear that Easterns only won because they had the top imports.

On brmtaylor.com a few days ago I wrote:
The first few days have seen some major surprises, with favourites Westerns having a horror run, winning just 1 of their 3 games. Easterns have maintained last years form, winning all 4 of their fixtures. It must be noted, that Easterns are boosted by many national team players (Hamilton Masakadza, Stuart Matsikenyeri, Timycen Maruma, Prosper Utseya) and A team players (Steven Nyamuzinga and Tino Mawoyo), and as such may not be as threatening when the national team players are unavailable.
In fact, I think Easterns would perhaps be one of the weakest teams when you remove Masakadza, Utseya, etc. Whether it was intentional that the better players got posted to Easterns or whether it was coincidence, we can only speculate.

On a different note, the Cricinfo article mentions the usual suspects did well... "Brendan Taylor (Northerns), Hamilton Masakadza (Easterns), Tatenda Taibu (Northerns) and Stuart Matsikenyeri (Easterns)". Needless to say it's pleasing that Taylor was mentioned before Masakadza (who did extremely well based on what I've seen), so perhaps he scored a few hundreds. It would be nice to see a few scorecards.

A shame Westerns couldn't win the title, but I think they are still the team to look out for. Boasting Mpofu, Mupariwa and Dabengwa (and no Ntuli, Marsh, Takarusenga, Williams' or Coventry!?!?!) they seemed to give Easterns a good run for their money, and they should be more dangerous in the Logan Cup and Faithwear series.

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Re: Series thread: ZC Twenty20 Tournament

Post by maehara »

brmtaylor.com admin wrote:I think it is quite clear that Easterns only won because they had the top imports.
Oh, you're quite right - I just don't like CricInfo's rather sneering implication that that somehow devalues the team's title. It's a bit like complaining that Yorkshire no longer restricts themselves to just player born in Yorkshire, and I don't recall them ever doing that...

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Re: Series thread: ZC Twenty20 Tournament

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maehara wrote:
brmtaylor.com admin wrote:I think it is quite clear that Easterns only won because they had the top imports.
Oh, you're quite right - I just don't like CricInfo's rather sneering implication that that somehow devalues the team's title. It's a bit like complaining that Yorkshire no longer restricts themselves to just player born in Yorkshire, and I don't recall them ever doing that...
I think it does devalue it. The team has got a lot of the country's strong players (again, intentional or not we can only speculate) so it shouldn't be too much of a surprise that they won the tournament (I still put my money on Westerns for the other tournaments, they are a tight knit unit).

If Zimbabwe had won the MTN series, can you imagine the outcry from South African domestic supporters? They would be calling for CSA blood, because a full member playing domestic sides is a horrible mismatch at best (sadly as we found out, that was not the case at all).

I'm finding it hard to describe this, but I'll give it my best shot. Prior to the re-formatting of the domestic competitions, there were probably a number of people who supported the different provinces (Mashonaland, Matabeleland, etc) and were probably members of those associations. These are the people who would really support their teams, even though it is only a domestic competition. These people exist everywhere, particularly in Australia (for the Sheffield Shield) and England (for the county games, I'm sure Train Driver will attest to this). Towards the end of the old setup, players were being shifted all over the place just as they are now, but at least you could still support your colours. Just like a football team, none of the players may come from a certain city, but you support the colours. Since the dissolution of those teams and the creation of Northerns and so on, all historical attachment to the team has been severed. It was the end of an era for the Logan Cup, and I think it was a mistake. How many people can honestly say that they are a devoted fan for the Southerns or the Centrals etc. If you were born in Harare and ended up playing for Northerns, it would mean little. To play for Mashonaland would mean something. Or if Australia went down the same path, playing for New South Wales would mean something, playing for the "Sydney Strikers" wouldn't. It seems over the past few years, the whole world is headed towards a franchise setup (South Africa, ICL, IPL, etc) and playing for your state or country will take a back seat.

What this is leading to, is that in the old setup, if Matabeleland (with true Matabeleland based players) played and lost to Manicaland (who fielded half the national team and were from all over the country) you would probably see an outcry from the supporters, saying it devalues the competition to have such a mismatch. But since ZC overhauled the domestic structure, there are no supporters to make an outcry.

I'm not saying that fielding players not born/living/working in that province is a bad thing, but it must be fair for all teams. Greg Strydom, Keith Dabengwa, Tawanda Mupariwa, Chris Mpofu (4) vs Tino Mawoyo, Hamilton Masakadza, Stuart Matsikenyeri, Timycen Maruma, Prosper Utseya, Steven Nyamuzinga (6) is not fair, and I imagine for Southerns and Centrals the "fairness gap" is widened further.

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Re: Series thread: ZC Twenty20 Tournament

Post by maehara »

ZC have made two mistakes with the "new" provincial structure:

- changing the names of the sides - boundary changes to accommodate the "new" provinces aside, Northerns is Mashonaland, Westerns is Matabeleland - the five current first-class sides are all based at the same grounds that the old five were (HSC, Queen's, Mutare SC, Kwekwe SC, Masvingo SC). I understand the historical attachment to the traditional provincial names - I knew quite a few people who proudly displayed Mashonaland badges on their tracksuits back in my schooldays - and I'd be fully in favour of them reverting.
- complete lack of promotion. If you don't bother letting people know there's a tournament on, of course they're not going to turn up to watch it.

Past that, I don't see the issue with using players from outside the provincial boundaries - every other sport in the world does it, most other cricketing nations do it for their first class sides, and supporters accept it just fine. If ZC had left the sides to play with what players were available from within the region, it would have been a straight fight between Northerns and Westerns, with the other three sides a complete irrelevance - and then there would have been even louder complaining about standards. ZC did what they could to make it a 5-way fight - perhaps they didn't get the balance right, but I'm not going to criticise them for trying.

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Re: Series thread: ZC Twenty20 Tournament

Post by zulu »

I dont know what to believe because all articles from cricinfo slate the domestic structure. By the sounds of it ZC are running it poorly by not advertising propelry and not providing scorecards! which is really disapointing considering its an official t20 tournment, What if they dont provide scorecards for the logan cup!? ... I dont see anything changing now that Chingoka has been cleared so we can expect more of the same shambolic running of tournments.

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Re: Series thread: ZC Twenty20 Tournament

Post by maehara »

zulu wrote:What if they dont provide scorecards for the logan cup!?
Took them six months to issue proper scorecards for the Logan Cup last year - don't see that changing this year, unfortunately. There's still only the one scorecard available for the T20 tourney, and still no results issued for the two Friday morning matches. Likewise, no details at all issued yet for the 'B' one-day and T20 competitions (other than that Westerns won them), and they took place a while back...

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