[ Poll ] Has Zimbabwe fallen to Kenya levels?

Participate in discussion with your fellow Zimbabwe cricket fans!

Has Zimbabwe fallen to Kenya levels?

Yes
7
32%
No
15
68%
 
Total votes: 22

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Kopje
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Re: [ Poll ] Has Zimbabwe fallen to Kenya levels?

Post by Kopje »

Our development structures for players and coaches are non existent. Let's say the current crop of players like Raza, Taylor, Hamy etc retired today, we do not have any fringe players immediately capable of replacing them and stepping onto the international arena. As one user rightfully said, our A team would not even be able to beat an Associate nation let alone an A team of a full member nation. Once we revive our grassroots structure and bring back the CFX Academy like it was in its prime, we can have a start of some improvement in us building better players for the future. I personally am against the use of academies such as ACHHP by Campbell or Rising Stars by Taibu (nothing personal), sole reason being that we cannot have our national academy/high performance led or owned by an individual. If that person leaves or falls out with ZC then what? Look what happened to Rising Stars the moment Taibu was sacked. The board itself should coordinate and run it with annual intakes that are match what the rest of the world is doing, for example look at how Afghanistan is building theirs.

Googly
Posts: 14197
Joined: Thu Feb 07, 2013 5:48 pm

Re: [ Poll ] Has Zimbabwe fallen to Kenya levels?

Post by Googly »

In an ideal world an in-house academy would be good, but they just can’t organize it. There are many problems to having their own, not least of which is who heads it up?
They just don’t have the personnel. The next problem is that it’s honestly a waste of time and money if you don’t have quality youngsters to put into the program. It’s a big big problem going forward. It ideally needs to be a natural progression from U19 and there just aren’t 12 players worth investing in. You’ll also find youngsters still wanting to go to university and basically getting out of here because the country’s future is so grim. They’d really need to buy into Zim cricket having a future and a lot would have to change.
Assume DEB’s one year tenure as temp Chairman went well I just know how it rolls here and there would be more shenanigans at the next election in 2020. It could well be two steps forwards and one backwards. That old race card will be pulled within the month if DEB invites anyone back. He’s probably more likely to spend the next year tidying up the finances as opposed to be canning and recruiting because that’s going to be a war zone, how much of their findings will be for public consumption also remains to be seen.
They can’t afford getting rid of too many folk because the labour laws here are designed to rape the employer.
One wonders how much power they will actually have. Are they just heading up an investigation and a house cleaning in preparation for 2020 or will they have the power to make sweeping changes? The people who’ve provided whatever evidence they’ve got will be expecting jobs, I know a couple of them and they’re not ideal :lol:
Whilst we all have high expectations it’s a monumental undertaking. Our cricket and our country are very broken, we have limited resources player-wise and personnel-wise and there’s going to have to be a lot of forgiveness and turning a blind eye to many things or we’re going to be left with very few people. Any unpalatable changes will just be undone and outvoted in 2020, that’s the nature of the beast. We’ll see in a year if people genuinely want change.

Googly
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Re: [ Poll ] Has Zimbabwe fallen to Kenya levels?

Post by Googly »

The first press statement from the interim board is going to be very interesting.

ZIMFAN
Posts: 333
Joined: Sun Dec 02, 2007 11:20 am

Re: [ Poll ] Has Zimbabwe fallen to Kenya levels?

Post by ZIMFAN »

Googly thanks as always for comprehensive and interesting thoughts. You have your ear to the ground. Did DEB know this was coming? I think you said elsewhere that with his ICC connections he would not accept it without knowing that the ICC would ok it, know any more on that?

Googly
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Re: [ Poll ] Has Zimbabwe fallen to Kenya levels?

Post by Googly »

Aside from sorting out the finances I’d say the next most important thing is to try and get our national side at least winning games against Ireland, Netherlands, Scotland etc and not losing as badly against the member nations.
I hate saying this but a couple of our current guys are not shaping up. The international standard has improved massively and we have stagnated and I’m not sure we have guys here that can fill any shoes. There are some good players and you see endless posts of why hasn’t this guy or that one had a shot, but my honest opinion is that there’s no one locally that would do better.
If I were DEB I’d be counting the pennies and doing whatever it takes to allocate funds to set up a proper A side. I’d do whatever it takes to entice Matigimu, Lake, Muyeye, Byrom, Welch, Murray, Mazarabani and B Curran back here. They’re all very good players and whilst there’s no guarantee they could make the step up, of one thing I am absolutely certain, and that’s that they have a lot more potential than any of the guys that are in our current system. Out of Byrom, Curran, Welch or Muyeye you’ll find at least one guy who will be decent up front. Lake has huge potential as an all-rounder, Murray is a great keeper and Matigimu and Blessing are both good seamers and if these guys are well coached we might have some worthy players in a year or so. Theres no point in playing musical chairs with the other players here, they’re not good enough to make an impact in international cricket with any consistency, I’m sorry I’ve seen them and it’s just a fact. There’s also zero point in getting these new guys into our FC system, it’s not strong enough and it guarantees mediocrity. We have to find our next best team, including as many of these blokes I’ve mentioned and get them playing something better than our franchise system and hold our collective breath and see if a couple of them put their hands up.

sloandog
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Re: [ Poll ] Has Zimbabwe fallen to Kenya levels?

Post by sloandog »

Is Ben Curran eligible for Zimbabwe 🇿🇼 though

Googly
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Re: [ Poll ] Has Zimbabwe fallen to Kenya levels?

Post by Googly »

That was just an assumption I’d made. I’m not in the loop at all. He’s smart and this must have been planned for a while, and I don’t think anyone is going to admit to it publicly, least of all ICC. I might be wrong and ICC come out swinging in the next few days, but it’s doubtful. Obviously we all want to see something different, we can’t keep sliding downhill like this, there’s not much further to slide, everyone wants to see us turn a corner, it’s not enough for the previous board (how that rolls off the tongue!) to prove they’re keeping to their payment schedules by not paying out a cent towards what’s important, and that’s playing cricket.

Googly
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Re: [ Poll ] Has Zimbabwe fallen to Kenya levels?

Post by Googly »

I’m fairly sure he has a dual citizenship and hasn’t played any representative cricket there. He’s played a few FC and list A games is all. I’m not 100% sure the ICC ruling on that if he now wants to play here, our local rules definitely won’t be more onerous than ICC’s and I’m pretty sure you can just swap over. I’ll check it out.
Last edited by Googly on Sun Jun 23, 2019 7:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.

sloandog
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Re: [ Poll ] Has Zimbabwe fallen to Kenya levels?

Post by sloandog »

There was a recent photo taken with the board being re elected. Out of all those guys, who’s the worst, except doc of course

Googly
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Re: [ Poll ] Has Zimbabwe fallen to Kenya levels?

Post by Googly »

I don’t know any of them, which means they probably don’t have a cricketing background or even have an interest in the game. I’d think they’re mostly yes men (and woman). Im not even sure what they do, business-wise. It’s possible they’re successful and I’m assuming have some sort of qualifications because that’s a requirement.

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