This Team by now would have been in business if Streak Taibu Combo Continued

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Andybligzz
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Re: This Team by now would have been in business if Streak Taibu Combo Continued

Post by Andybligzz »

eugene wrote:
Wed Mar 04, 2020 12:03 am
That UAE loss is hard to put in the past because it, more than any other result affected the present and future of Zimbabwean cricket. We may never play in another ODI CWC again.
* we never will play in another odi cwc again
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Re: This Team by now would have been in business if Streak Taibu Combo Continued

Post by Stoneman Returns »

Missing 2019 T20 Qualifiers was more sad, as the team got ban for no reason

So much high quality nvestigation was going on to clean the system at the end none of the culprits were punished and the team missed a chance of qualifying in a global event.
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Re: This Team by now would have been in business if Streak Taibu Combo Continued

Post by zimbos_05 »

Stoneman Returns wrote:
Wed Mar 04, 2020 3:34 am
Missing 2019 T20 Qualifiers was more sad, as the team got ban for no reason

So much high quality nvestigation was going on to clean the system at the end none of the culprits were punished and the team missed a chance of qualifying in a global event.
Missing T20 has been a major bummer especially because it has much smaller nations there, and also because I was planning to watch the team but now cant.

The system would have been clean, but Hammy worked his magic and got everyone to not stand together and instead supported the corrupt board and in the end, they screwed over themselves.

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Re: This Team by now would have been in business if Streak Taibu Combo Continued

Post by Stoneman Returns »

Replacement of Streak & Taibu seems will put Zimbabwe out of Cricket Map
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Re: This Team by now would have been in business if Streak Taibu Combo Continued

Post by ZIMDOGGY »

I’d like to here from you Stoneman how a coach can change a test match team dramatically?
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Re: This Team by now would have been in business if Streak Taibu Combo Continued

Post by Stoneman Returns »

ZIMDOGGY wrote:
Fri Mar 06, 2020 2:08 pm
I’d like to here from you Stoneman how a coach can change a test match team dramatically?
First of all test format players are considered to be the classical ones, best defense and techniques and bowlers with ability to take wickets with all their skills ( swing, seam, reverse swing, bouncers) with the ball.

For a coach, thing to do is to change the mentality and thinking ability of the players, batsman should'nt go into the shell by defending and taking singles, a test player can play all format if his thinking is right and for a bowler, coach should make him understand how to stop singles and big shorts, in that case shorter format bowlers in this generation should have slowers, yorkers and bouncers to be success.
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Re: This Team by now would have been in business if Streak Taibu Combo Continued

Post by kudet »

https://www.cricbuzz.com/cricket-news/1 ... bFEVr23GpM
"Late 2007 to 2009 was when I played my best cricket, after rejoining the national team" - Tatenda Taibu ©Getty
In this new Cricbuzz series - The IPL Benchwarmers - we talk to players who made it to the IPL alright, but didn't go very far, and were out of opportunities - and reckoning - sooner than they'd have liked.

In this ultra-professional age of Twenty20 cricket, in which the game is increasingly analysed to within an inch of its life, it's refreshing to return to the shortest format's roots and recall what the early days of the IPL were like. IPL squads these days are assembled on the back of hours and hours of statistical examination, highbrow tactical debate and attempts to control even the minutiae of a head-to-head encounter. But this was not the case in 2008, when the first edition of one of world sport's most successful events was effectively a game of real-life fantasy cricket played out by India's millionaires.

The extreme to which this went is brilliantly represented by the story of Tatenda Taibu, Zimbabwe's diminutive wicketkeeper-batsman and a player who scored a lucrative gig at Kolkata Knight Riders, thanks to having admirers in high places. Taibu was at the top of his game in January 2008, but was nonetheless taken aback to receive a phone call from a certain 'Diraj' during Zimbabwe's tour of Pakistan - the sort of call that might raise one's eyebrows. Diraj said that KKR wanted to put Taibu's name in the auction for the inaugural IPL, and could he provide his email address so that he could complete the necessary forms.

Taibu was fresh from scoring 81 in an ODI in Hyderabad, a city in the Sindh province of Pakistan, but soon obliged. He was duly snapped up for $125,000 at the auction, and was on his way to Bollywood icon Shah Rukh Khan's team. It would be a few months before he learnt KKR's primary motivation for adding him to a squad that had Brendon McCullum and Wriddhiman Saha among the wicketkeeping stock.

"Shah Rukh was brilliant, amazing, although maybe I'm a bit biased because I was his son's favourite player," Taibu recalls to Cricbuzz. "I remember him bringing his son (Aryan) into the changing room and he came straight to me and said, 'Tatenda, there is someone I would like you to meet.' His son was 10 at the time if my memory serves me right. And he says, 'You know what, yours was the first name I wrote on the paper, because my son thinks you are round about the same age [as him], because you are short.'"

The story should not diminish Taibu's reputation as a cricketer. He was selected for a tour of the West Indies in 2000 at the age of 16, at a time when Zimbabwe were peaking as a cricketing nation. When politics led the country to lose 15 of its best players in the rebel walkout of 2004, Taibu became the youngest captain in Test history, and his batting capabilities were the difference between heavy defeat and total annihilation in most games. By late 2005, tired of Zimbabwe Cricket's lies and mismanagement, and entangled in a dark political web that brought his family's safety into question, he quit international cricket and went wandering - through Bangladesh, England and South Africa. When ZC's sponsors made Taibu's return one of their conditions for ongoing funding, Taibu was talked into returning.

He announced his international comeback in mid-2007 with an unbeaten century against South Africa, and narrowed his focus to individual goals in order to shield out the chaos of Zimbabwe's cricket structures. "Late 2007 to 2009 was when I played my best cricket, after rejoining the national team," he says. "I remember my state of mind during that period, I concentrated less on the team and more on myself. That was because of the disappointment, which anyone who knows my history will understand. Zimbabwe cricket was not in a good state at that time. We had withdrawn ourselves from Test cricket so we were only playing 50-over cricket."

Needless to say with ZC in dire straits, and Zimbabwe as a country bottoming out economically in 2008, a three-year contract with KKR that netted $110,000 per year (after tax) was handy - particularly for someone with healthy habits. "It was a lot of money in comparison to what I was earning from Zimbabwe Cricket, which at the time was about $80,000-90,000 a year," recalls Taibu. "I'm very economical when it comes to using money - I'm not a flashy kind of person or materialistic. So I bought a property and used some of the money to pay back to my coaches who had given time for me to achieve what I achieved. My wife and I helped out a children's home as well, and managed to put some in savings. It went a long way for us."

But Taibu's ambitions went beyond a big payday and its potential to assist people around him. He wanted to succeed on the field as well. His first task, though, was simply to get onto that field. While he had an admirer in high places, Aryan Khan was not picking the playing XI, and Taibu was seen as a middle-order batting option in a squad full of international stars.

"After looking at the squad and the competition that I had, I actually didn't think I was going to get a single game," Taibu admits. "We had Ricky Ponting, Chris Gayle, Dave Hussey, Umar Gul, Shoaib Akhtar, Ajantha Mendis, Salman Butt, Mohammad Hafeez, Brad Hodge and Brendon McCullum. But I kept on preparing well, because the One that controls the universe might have other plans, and other plans He had. After losing four straight games, I got a chance. I had batted well in all the warm-up games without being dismissed. In particular, one game we played against each other I played really well on a very green track against Shoaib, Umar Gul and Ajit Agarkar. The way I prepared managed to get the confidence of our captain, Sourav Ganguly, and coach John Buchanan."

Taibu's selection would coincide with Kolkata breaking a four-match losing streak to win three on the trot, but the Zimbabwean contributed just 28 runs in those three games. Looking back, he feels that his entire IPL career came down to his first innings, and his inability to convert a promising start into something more. Picked to bat at No 5 in a game against Bangalore at Eden Gardens, Taibu walked to the crease with the home side on 46 for 3 batting first, after local icon Ganguly had been run out. The Bangalore attack boasted Dale Steyn, Zaheer Khan, Praveen Kumar, R Vinay Kumar and Anil Kumble, and the crowd was bigger than any he had played in front of before, but Taibu was not feeling overawed.

"I loved it and if anything I played better in front of bigger crowds. It was nice having such noise that you could not even hear yourself speak," he says. "I felt really great. I remember Kumar was bowling and I got two runs off the first ball and blocked the next one. Straight away I felt good. When he tried to bowl inswing I hit him over midwicket, and when he tried to bowl away swing I hit him over extra cover. Those are the two boundaries that I scored. But the most profound thing I remember about the innings is that it could have made me way better than I was. Had I gone on to convert my 15 to a fifty or something, that would have almost cemented my place, but I didn't take that opportunity.

"Steyn was brought back into the attack because I was looking set and we were starting to build an innings, and instead of just helping the ball on its way I tried to smash it for six and got a top edge (that was caught by wicketkeeper Mark Boucher). The other two games weren't much to talk about, because I was coming in around the 18th or 19th over without much to do - I would just try and give my partner strike. That's why I always go back to that first innings, which was the only time I had a chance to make something of myself in that league."

While he had little opportunity to score runs, Taibu still collected some memories along the way. The third match, against Delhi Daredevils, saw Shoaib Akhtar make a memorable IPL debut with a searing spell of new-ball bowling that destroyed a top order of Gautam Gambhir, Virender Sehwag and AB de Villiers. Shoaib finished with 4 for 11 from three overs as Delhi were bowled out for 110, but Taibu was just surprised to see the Pakistani pacer on the field.

"We had practised with him and the way he had bowled and his fitness levels were nowhere near international standards. He had not been playing for a long time due to an injury and had just come back to playing. He struggled to finish his overs in the squad games we played in between the proper matches and he had struggled with our fitness practices. So I was surprised he was fit to take the field. I remember thinking, 'Either fair play to his character that he can take the field when he isn't ready, or fair play to the trainer who managed to get him in shape.' He bowled really quickly and swung the ball."

Taibu was run out for seven in that game, taking on Tillakaratne Dilshan's arm as he sped back for a second. "He was a very good fielder but I fancied myself as a quick runner between the wickets and I thought I would make it. I actually made my ground but the bat bounced off the ground. Had the rules been as they are now, I would have made it."

Taibu was dropped after that, and watched Kolkata go on a three-game losing streak. He was due to return for a game in Delhi towards the end of the campaign, until it was washed out without a ball being bowled. KKR eventually finished sixth to miss out on the semi-finals, and Taibu found himself heading back to his old life.

"It first hit me when I got to the airport and I was left to board my flight back to Zimbabwe. I no longer had guards around me and people carrying my bag, and I'd just left a professional setup. A week later I was playing a first-class game, and it was like living in a different world altogether. There was high professionalism at the IPL and then I came back home and the level was so different - even just the pace at which the game was played. It's supposed to be 'easier' but you actually start to struggle because of the pace, just waiting for the ball to get to you, and getting bad balls that you won't get at IPL level. I found it very difficult adjusting from that high level of cricket to going back to our franchise cricket."

Kolkata paid Taibu's contract out the following year and let him go - a sign, perhaps, that there was already less room for sentiment in the IPL. He played on for Zimbabwe until mid-2012, when he quit international cricket at the age of 29 to focus on his work with the church. Disillusionment at the way cricket was being run in Zimbabwe did not make the decision difficult. A subsequent spell as a selector and cricket director in Zimbabwe ended in further acrimony, but Taibu has let that go now. Last year he released an autobiography that laid out the details of a career that was so often derailed by politics. His son TJ has been reading it during lockdown at the family's home in Liverpool, and is not the only one to have provided a positive review. One suspects that Aryan Khan, now a 22-year-old filmmaking student, might have been an equally avid reader.

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Re: This Team by now would have been in business if Streak Taibu Combo Continued

Post by jaybro »

I thought at the time Taibu was an odd pick; now we know why they drafted him 😂😂😂
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Re: This Team by now would have been in business if Streak Taibu Combo Continued

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Re: This Team by now would have been in business if Streak Taibu Combo Continued

Post by Mueddie28 »

ZIMDOGGY wrote:
Fri Mar 06, 2020 2:08 pm
I’d like to here from you Stoneman how a coach can change a test match team dramatically?
1 Taibu / Streak were not easily bullied in team selection
Maruma, Chigumbura & Chibhabha we heading for retirement until an new coaching staff was in placed...
2 Taibu/ Streak combo were bringing foreign based players and persuading them to play for 🇿🇼 ...now we are stuck recycling to old trash...
3 Taibu / Streak combo had skins on the wall ..Youngsters like Murray & even Ed Byrom we leaning on playing for Zimbabwe until ZC changed the coaching staff...

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