IT IS time to decide about Zimbabwe’s future as an international cricketing nation. South Africa are involved in a three-match one-day international series and Australia arrive in a couple of days to contest a Triangular series with the Proteas and their hosts. Hopefully it will be a contest.
It has been a decade of turmoil for Zimbabwe Cricket during which it has been all too easy to lob grenades from beyond the country’s borders, to sneer at the underperforming national team and to scowl at the administrators who have, at times, failed to pay the players on time. So many judgments made from afar.
To his great credit and the credit of his maligned organisation, International Cricket Council (ICC) CEO David Richardson is one man who has got off his backside and made the journey to Harare to see for himself whether the game is, in fact, in ruins. He had actual meetings and conversations with people from across the spectrum.
He heard tales of ineptitude and inefficiency, but he also heard stories of endeavour and determination. He saw many signs of cricketing life and, whereas a decade ago there was a racial disproportion that outweighed even SA’s, these days the game is truly a majority sport, no longer dominated by the white minority.
For various reasons, not the least of which is the amount of time and dedication required to become any good at it, cricket bites deeper into young men’s sporting addictions than most other team sports. And once it bites it rarely releases — which can lead to tragedy, of course, but that’s a different story.
John Nyumbu didn’t play until he was 16 years old. Loitering beyond the boundary at school one day, he was asked to field. Last week, aged 29, he took 5/157 on his Test debut against the best team in the world. Asked what had sustained him pursuing a playing career through the bleakest of times when domestic cricket was struggling to survive, he replied: "My love for the game. Nothing could shake that."
The next three weeks is an opportunity for the world to see what is actually happening in the country. Television pictures show a fraction of that, naturally. It is instructive that only two Australian journalists will be coming to the country, one of whom is employed by Cricket Australia and the other by the national news agency, Australian Associated Press.
Neither will have the time (nor the leeway) to look very far from events on the field.
But they should.
Batsman George Bailey is a rare breed among modern international players and provided a bright flicker of hope last week in saying that Michael Clarke’s team should regard themselves as "cricket missionaries" and engage with the local players and supporters. "We need to do our bit to help grow the game in the smaller nations," Bailey said.
To their great credit, Hashim Amla and AB de Villiers have shown more than merely a willingness to do that, they have been keen to talk and share their experience with net bowlers and national players alike.
The problems are more in the boardroom. "Zim Cricket is corrupt" and the "the players don’t get paid" have become chorus lines for the cynical. One-time ICC CE Malcolm Speed spent more than half a million dollars commissioning a forensic audit of Zimbabwe Cricket’s financial affairs. No theft or corruption was discovered. A great deal of haphazard, misguided and naive management was. Are there ZC officials taking percentages from commercial deals? Yes, probably. Englishmen and Australians might want to ask themselves why they call that "commission" at home but "theft" in Zimbabwe.
The Zimbabwe Players Association is now up and running, the national players all have contracts renegotiated, partly on their terms, and they are now all being paid regularly. For a whole three months in a row, anyway.
The ICC’s offer this year of a financial bail-out came with the caveat of an ICC-appointed administrator which, while understandable, was a little patronising. Organise more tours and persuade the England Cricket Board to untie its government nappy and get their backsides here. That’s wh