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A defiant Zimbabwe captain Elton Chigumbura has said he would not step down as skipper, as the national cricket team touched down at the Harare International Airport from a disappointing campaign at the World Cup.

Chigumbura admitted that he had suffered a dip in form but said he would work hard in the next four months to rediscover his form.

“When you are not playing well it’s expected that people are going to speculate over my captaincy, but I don’t feel any pressure to quit.

“In fact, my immediate goal is to work harder and the next four months in the new season are going to be important for me as I will be aiming to rediscover my touch. I now have an idea of some of the areas that I need to work on,” said Chigumbura.

However, Chigumbura does not believe that the captaincy has any bearing on his loss of form. “I don’t think the captaincy has affected my performance in any way, it’s just that I’m going through a bad patch, especially with the bat which is why I have not performed well.

“In my last two games I thought I was getting in better shape and hopefully I will continue improving and hopefully do well as I did in the warm-up match,” he said.

Chigumbura’s highest score in Zimbabwe’s World Cup campaign was an unbeaten 38 runs in the final match against Kenya which had been preceded by another unbeaten knock of 32 runs in the rain-affected match against Pakistan.

His other two performances included six runs against Sri Lanka, five runs against Canada, 14 runs against Australia in the first match and in the end averaged just over 20 runs.

Assistant coach Steven Mangongo said the issue of Chigumbura’s captaincy was being taken out of context.

Despite Chigumbura vowing to stay on as captain last month, ZC convener of selectors Alistair Campbell and the national batting coach, Grant Flower, have suggested he leave the captaincy to someone else. “I think it’s more important for him to probably get his own game back on track and just concentrate on his own basics –batting, bowling and fielding- and maybe leave the captaincy to someone else. Because I think he is an extremely talented player but we are not seeing half of his ability at the moment,” said Flower.....

Campbell said the decision to relieve him of his duty and give him more time to focus on his game may not be initiated by ZC if Chigumbura does not make a decision to step down. “It’s no speculation that his performance has not been good since he was captain, but it is up to him to sit down and reflect on what he wants to do. He is one of the best players and as Zimbabwe Cricket we want to him to perform his best. He has not being doing that lately and it is up to him to decide whether it is because of the captaincy or not,” said Campbell.

maehara wrote:...and if Campbell can only advise Chigs to stand down, and not do anything about it, it kinda indicates that Campbell's power over playing matters isn't as absolute as some would have us believe. (I say that in a good way, given some people seem to think he's standing astride ZC like a colossus and doing his best to ruin it...)

Conant wrote:I think they're just trying to nudge him to that decision, before they're forced to shaft him.