Has Mangongo cooked his goose?

[Googly]

The whole point is that you can actually stop the migration. With careful planning from grass roots upwards and the right people at the helm you can have a world class team in the not too distant future. The problem is that some painful changes are required, and really soon.
I'm happy for the guys currently representing us and support them wholeheartedly, and there are a number of them with real ability and potential, but few consistent match winners.

[betterdays]

The whole point is that you can actually stop the migration. With careful planning from grass roots upwards and the right people at the helm you can have a world class team in the not too distant future. .

I think the second point negate the first...that is my point.

[bayhaus]

Kana Mangongo anetsa, varume batai munhu!

Loosely translated to if Mangongo is a problem then gentlemen, grab that person?

[eugene]

Googly should be commended for participating in this forum, he is an invaluable asset as he is actually on the ground in Zimbabwe and seems to know a lot of people. To be honest nothing he has reported about ZC is all that surprising, we all know they are a bunch of incompetent zanoid thugs.

I know this is difficult for some to understand, but racism is not the motivating action behind everything in life.

[betterdays]

I know this is difficult for some to understand, but racism is not the motivating action behind everything in life.

... but it is a big part of a Zimbo's consciousness (particularly amoung those with economic and/or political power) ... as Googly himself has attested on numerous occasions. I'm sure people would be less reactionary about certain folks views on certain players if they held some balanced notions on certain other players too.

I know Zimdoggy doesn't like it but I think it's fair to blow the whistle if people claim Williams, Taylor, Waller and Ervine (if available) are certainties and then call for Moor, Lake, Bentley - or whoever has had one good innings, and barely any FC experience under their belt - to be thrown into the team ... at whose expense!?

i don't think one needs to get angry about it per se but i see nothing wrong with asking people to be accountable. Googly is right that there are no real consistent match-winners but there is an implication that these have existed ... i reckon our strongest team was probably the one with Goodwin and Johnson in it but they failed to beat a WI side that had seen much better days and who they seemed to be having the better of !? certain players sometimes seem overvalued considering while others undervalued - considering!

[betterdays]

Kana Mangongo anetsa, varume batai munhu!

Loosely translated to if Mangongo is a problem then gentlemen, grab that person?

it probably goes a little deeper than just Stevie though

[betterdays]

When i knew Googly was a white zimbo forumite (a rarity these days,

did you mean " a white zimbo-based forumite"? cos i thought eugene, sloandog, jemisi etc... were white zimbos? plus, the make up of the forum's regular contributors has barely changed since i joined...?

[Jemisi]

I'm not from Zim - I'm just a convert to the cause.

Saying a white player should be picked from nowhere does seem consistent with Hhm's picking of a black player from nowhere...

But the players with the top performances in the batting order happen to be Taylor, Hami, Vusi, Williams, Waller, Ervine, Mawoyo. The only others with records in the same ballpark are Mutizwa and Vermeulen and they are off the radar due to form and unrelated social factors. Guys average 40 for a reason and they average 30 for a reason and it has little to do with their skin colour. Before making a racial insinuation there ought to be some glaring inconsistency between a players' stats and the strength of the calls for him to play.

I mean calling for a Cephas over a Sean for example could lead one to question motives beyond cricket issues. Calling for Williams over Maruma hardly amounts to enough evidence to accuse another of racial bias.

[CrimsonAvenger]

I'm not from Zim - I'm just a convert to the cause.

Saying a white player should be picked from nowhere does seem consistent with Hhm's picking of a black player from nowhere...

But the players with the top performances in the batting order happen to be Taylor, Hami, Vusi, Williams, Waller, Ervine, Mawoyo. The only others with records in the same ballpark are Mutizwa and Vermeulen and they are off the radar due to form and unrelated social factors. Guys average 40 for a reason and they average 30 for a reason and it has little to do with their skin colour. Before making a racial insinuation there ought to be some glaring inconsistency between a players' stats and the strength of the calls for him to play.

I mean calling for a Cephas over a Sean for example could lead one to question motives beyond cricket issues. Calling for Williams over Maruma hardly amounts to enough evidence to accuse another of racial bias.

Point well made.

[Googly]

I know this is difficult for some to understand, but racism is not the motivating action behind everything in life.

... but it is a big part of a Zimbo's consciousness (particularly amoung those with economic and/or political power) ... as Googly himself has attested on numerous occasions. I'm sure people would be less reactionary about certain folks views on certain players if they held some balanced notions on certain other players too.

I know Zimdoggy doesn't like it but I think it's fair to blow the whistle if people claim Williams, Taylor, Waller and Ervine (if available) are certainties and then call for Moor, Lake, Bentley - or whoever has had one good innings, and barely any FC experience under their belt - to be thrown into the team ... at whose expense!?

i don't think one needs to get angry about it per se but i see nothing wrong with asking people to be accountable. Googly is right that there are no real consistent match-winners but there is an implication that these have existed ... i reckon our strongest team was probably the one with Goodwin and Johnson in it but they failed to beat a WI side that had seen much better days and who they seemed to be having the better of !? certain players sometimes seem overvalued considering while others undervalued - considering!

Although those guys didn't have a high win ratio that era was, as you say, our best to date. Flower, Brandes, Olonga, Streak, Goodwin, Johnson, to name a few were all capable of pulling it off. Even amongst that lot Flower and Goodwin were really the only two consistently great batters, the others had their great moments but they lacked consistency. It's the story with Zim cricket. Most of our past wins actually came from defending low totals with some remarkable fielding and bowling. I firmly believe that it is very difficult to create a world class batsman from a player who never made huge runs at schoolboy level. You don't see many black players doing this because they lacked the opportunity. They played the games but lacked the coaching and technique at an early age to give them the means to compile big totals consistently. The same still applies, nothing has really changed. In fact the general standard of coaching has got worse, if anything. White kids are actually in the same boat but a few who put in the extra hard yards of practice reap the rewards if they have the talent. It's the old story of being raised in a cricketing environment with parents/relatives who are passionate about the game and who infuse the culture into their kids. I see white kids (and a few black ones) whose parents throw cash at the problem and the kids go for numerous extra coaching sessions and for sure it helps a lot, but it's not the same as breathing cricket in the household and
instilling a burning desire to not go out and to make big hundreds. My list of batsmen with real potential amongst the younger ranks doesn't include many black players for the reasons I've stated. This needs to change for our cricket to progress. I see Jack Myers has been putting in the hard yards of late. All power to him, he's a good player, and a good kid.