You're a billionaire and have been appointed ZC chairman, whats the plan?

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Re: You're a billionaire and have been appointed ZC chairman, whats the plan?

Post by brmtaylor.com admin »

The tourism benefits of Victoria Falls are too big to ignore though. With the right marketing you could have a yearly marquee fixture there... a New Years Test or Easter T20 tri-series or something, alternating teams like Australia, England, New Zealand, Ireland, India - countries where you could set up lucrative travel deals and inject a bit of money into the local economy, and a tidy little profit for ZC too with included tickets.

If ZC owned the land (?) then you won't have an HSC lease situation either - you just need to have enough drunken parties and Sevens tournaments to break even throughout the rest of the year right?

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Re: You're a billionaire and have been appointed ZC chairman, whats the plan?

Post by ZIMDOGGY »

Victoria falls is a premier tourist destination but not in the same sense of a New York or Bondi Beach even.

You have to be in that part of Africa. Lucky it’s on all the brochures.
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Re: You're a billionaire and have been appointed ZC chairman, whats the plan?

Post by ZIMDOGGY »

Googly wrote:
Sun Nov 18, 2018 5:53 am
There isn’t the interest in cricket here to try and spread the game. Some years ago ZC spent money putting in a facility in a high density area in Kwekwe- nets and a pitch, and it’s now a soccer pitch and basketball courts I believe. You can’t set something up and then expect the local community to run with it, there isn’t the interest or the money. Cricket is an expensive sport. The problem is people expect to be spoon fed and there isn’t the money, the personnel or the interest for that either.
Money needs to be spent in only a few key areas manned by the right people. Forget about places like Hwange and Vic Falls, you’d may as well burn that money.

In order for us to be vaguely competitive we need to dramatically improve our junior cricket, the standard is piss poor, and that’s in the main schools, it’s even worse in the few other schools that play it. I would spend money on 4 or 5 government schools that used to have facilities and by default they have a captive group of potential players. The problem with school practice is that no one is really going to improve that much in a school net environment. Batters need an hour a day 4-5 days a week with quality coaching in order to make meaningful progress. A 10 minute slot with one kid bowling well and the rest being pie chuckers just doesn’t cut it.

I’d spend money on 10 development coaches that passed the strictest assessment. I would task them with producing 6 good cricketers in three years ea. They would have to find them, bring them for an assessment by an expert panel, sign them up and then produce a program that saw the boys playing 5 hours a week, with weekly video reviews by an independent panel that not only reviewed the boys’ progress but also the coaches. I’d have those boys on scholarships, regardless of how rich or poor they were. At the end of those 3 years I’d pay the leading coach a 200k bonus. This would cost about 1.5m over three years and would solve most of our problems.

I’d build 4 indoor 5 lane facilities with adjacent grass nets, complete with bowling machines and live camera feeds to head office. That’s not more than 3 mill.
Given that I have ascertained your close enough to the action without being in the action, I’m surprised you haven’t thrown your hat in the ring to run the joint in some capacity. You’d go good.

I like your style because you’re not so much ‘Dream big’ but ‘dream real’ and I think that’s what Zimbabwe needs at this point.

Get your resume up to date and click that email.
Cricinfo profile of the 'James Bond' of cricket:

FULL NAME: Angus James Mackay
BORN: 13 June 1967, Harare
KNOWN AS: Gus Mackay

'The' Gus Mackay.

Hero.
Sportsman.
Artist.
Player.

**
Q. VUSI SIBANDA, WHERE DO YOU HOP?

A. UNDA DA ENTERTAINMENT CENTRE*

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Re: You're a billionaire and have been appointed ZC chairman, whats the plan?

Post by ZIMDOGGY »

brmtaylor.com admin wrote:
Sun Nov 18, 2018 9:22 am
The tourism benefits of Victoria Falls are too big to ignore though. With the right marketing you could have a yearly marquee fixture there... a New Years Test or Easter T20 tri-series or something, alternating teams like Australia, England, New Zealand, Ireland, India - countries where you could set up lucrative travel deals and inject a bit of money into the local economy, and a tidy little profit for ZC too with included tickets.

If ZC owned the land (?) then you won't have an HSC lease situation either - you just need to have enough drunken parties and Sevens tournaments to break even throughout the rest of the year right?
The New Years region is too congested. But I’m sure there’s a spot
It could happen
Cricinfo profile of the 'James Bond' of cricket:

FULL NAME: Angus James Mackay
BORN: 13 June 1967, Harare
KNOWN AS: Gus Mackay

'The' Gus Mackay.

Hero.
Sportsman.
Artist.
Player.

**
Q. VUSI SIBANDA, WHERE DO YOU HOP?

A. UNDA DA ENTERTAINMENT CENTRE*

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Re: You're a billionaire and have been appointed ZC chairman, whats the plan?

Post by zimbos_05 »

There's not much I would do differently from the OP in terms of ZC structure and governance of the game. However, a lot will have to be done to take ZC away from being associated with the government or other aspects in Zim in any way.

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Re: You're a billionaire and have been appointed ZC chairman, whats the plan?

Post by jaybro »

You won’t get South Africa, Australia or NZ over for a New Years Test

India and England would be the best case scenario

Victoria falls sounds great but I’d stick to Harare and built a state of the art facility that could house the senior team and the academy. If you have great facilities and resources you’ll have a better chance of attracting the top coaches to help produce good players.

As Googly said the schools and club system need big help and that’s where you’ll need spend the money because that’s where the next generation of players are coming from.

The idea of concentrating on a select few of schools would never wash because it will be looked as an elitist sport again which is what they’ve been trying to work away from.

I realise I don’t know the landscape of Zimbabwe like some of you guys but the rural areas still need attention, maybe building a facility there and leaving it there to be run isn’t the best idea, but there needs to be some type of strategy in place to identify talent in those areas. For me the smartest idea would be to run scouting camps or something of the like an offer scholarships at the best schools to attract the kids.
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Re: You're a billionaire and have been appointed ZC chairman, whats the plan?

Post by zimbos_05 »

People are reading too much in to the Vic Falls thing within the context of this topic. You have $1bn. There is no reason why you can't revamp HSC and build a stadium at Vic Falls.

Image

Image

These two stadiums from New Zealand are great templates. No need for major stands or anything like that. I really like the Queenstown Ground in the second photo. It's got like a local ground feel to it but on an international standard.

If we are talking about the Vic Falls ground in a realistic actual manner, then yes. It's silly to build there considering we can't even pay our players and staff, and HSC has been neglected. I'm sure Queens and Kwekwe could also do with some investment.

If the F1 track thing is true, then it's just another waste of funds from the government, again showing how poor they are at actually running the country. You are not going to get massive crowds in Zim from locals. Catering to the F1 also requires a huge amount of technical aspects to not just cater to the cars, but also the mechanical teams, the television stations etc. The benefits of a well run F1 could be good for the country, but the need for one in Zim is not there.

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