U19 World Cup | South Africa | Jan-Feb 2024

[Donald]

Unless Zim beat Australia. 20 years from that famous win with ballance Williams and mawayo in the side

[andrea lanzoni]

Google says the Namibian population is 2.5 million and 6% are white. That's 150 000. Assume half are male-75000,
conservatively assume there are 10 000 schoolboys and that 5000 play cricket. They're at school for 14 years and you'll pick an u19 side from the last 2 years, or 14% of 5000. Thats 700 white players who probably go to better schools with good cricket facilities in SA and Namibia. Halve that number just for the hell of it. 350.
They'll dramatically outnumber the black Namibians who play cricket. But I'd thumb suck that they have a pool of about 400 u19's to choose from, of whom 120 will be fair to good cricketers simply because they have access to better facilities and play a higher standard of cricket. Halve that again for the sake of argument. 60

Here in Zim we pick out u19 from about 50 white kids of whom 90% are very ordinary and from about 200 black kids, again 90% are very average. Of these boys only about 50 have access to decent facilities. So we have 100 kids you can look at and maybe 20 tops would be good enough that you look twice.

My point being that "lowly" Namibia have almost 3 times as many good cricketers to choose an u19 side from.

The other point of view of mine, that I have posted a few times, is that in Zimbabwe you have to pursue extensive tapeball cricket in the less schooled-low income black communities.
The investment to spread tapeball bats is insignificant, so are tennis balls. No other kit is necessary.

From tapeball cricket you may have thousands and thousands of players.

Then, from such large pool, you may scout talented young bowlers who can bowl at over 80 mph.
A speed-gun sells for little more than 100€ on Amazon. How about organizing contests to award fastest tapeball bowlers? They are (almost) zero cost events.
I'm deeply sure that in Zimbabwe do exist at least a dozen of 'unexpressed Muzarabanis'.

From the very same big pool you may scout some natural talented batsmen to boot.

These talents may be given scholarship to be fine tuned in cricket academies.

This is a truly and realistic (very) low budget policy.

[ZIMDOGGY]

Google says the Namibian population is 2.5 million and 6% are white. That's 150 000. Assume half are male-75000,
conservatively assume there are 10 000 schoolboys and that 5000 play cricket. They're at school for 14 years and you'll pick an u19 side from the last 2 years, or 14% of 5000. Thats 700 white players who probably go to better schools with good cricket facilities in SA and Namibia. Halve that number just for the hell of it. 350.
They'll dramatically outnumber the black Namibians who play cricket. But I'd thumb suck that they have a pool of about 400 u19's to choose from, of whom 120 will be fair to good cricketers simply because they have access to better facilities and play a higher standard of cricket. Halve that again for the sake of argument. 60

Here in Zim we pick out u19 from about 50 white kids of whom 90% are very ordinary and from about 200 black kids, again 90% are very average. Of these boys only about 50 have access to decent facilities. So we have 100 kids you can look at and maybe 20 tops would be good enough that you look twice.

My point being that "lowly" Namibia have almost 3 times as many good cricketers to choose an u19 side from.

The other point of view of mine, that I have posted a few times, is that in Zimbabwe you have to pursue extensive tapeball cricket in the less schooled-low income black communities.
The investment to spread tapeball bats is insignificant, so are tennis balls. No other kit is necessary.

From tapeball cricket you may have thousands and thousands of players.

Then, from such large pool, you may scout talented young bowlers who can bowl at over 80 mph.
A speed-gun sells for little more than 100€ on Amazon. How about organizing contests to award fastest tapeball bowlers? They are (almost) zero cost events.
I'm deeply sure that in Zimbabwe do exist at least a dozen of 'unexpressed Muzarabanis'.

From the very same big pool you may scout some natural talented batsmen to boot.

These talents may be given scholarship to be fine tuned in cricket academies.

This is a truly and realistic (very) low budget policy.

Im not sure what you mean by invest in tapeball cricket?

Tapeball cricket is just something you do as a kid when you want to play on the street with your friend bored and you dont have any money so you put sticky tape over a tennis ball.

Not sure why you would 'invest' in that?

That is like me going to italy and saying we should invest in kicking around helium balloons as soccer balls in Napoli.

Why not just give them balls?

[Donald]

Kimberley pitches are awful. Zim better keep that extra batsman for tomorrow

[secretzimbo]

28/3

[andrea lanzoni]

Im not sure what you mean by invest in tapeball cricket?

Tapeball cricket is just something you do as a kid when you want to play on the street with your friend bored and you dont have any money so you put sticky tape over a tennis ball.

Not sure why you would 'invest' in that?

That is like me going to italy and saying we should invest in kicking around helium balloons as soccer balls in Napoli.

Why not just give them balls?

I try to explain myself better.

In Italy we have less thaan a dozen ethnic italian cricketers (myself included).

We have 1.000 cricketers (99.9% from subcontinent) playing hardball cricket in federation managed leagues .

We have some 20.000 (maybe more) tapeball cricketers.
None of them are kids. All of them adult or youth.

In every major town in Italy you may see tapeball matches held in public grounds or supermarket parking lots, every Saturday and Sunday.
Very, very often they hire soccer fields surrounded by track and organize floodlit tournaments. Often with live facebook streaming with a several thousand people audience (in their mother Countries).

All these tapeball cricketers are migrants with very low income jobs.

So tapeball is NOT kid pastime, rather it is the best grassroot opportunity.

When I mean investing in tapeball cricket in Zimbabwe, I mean to promote matches, tournaments, fast bowling contests, etc. to have the chance to scout potential talented athletes in low income black communities.

Distributing tapeball bats, tennis balls and some prizes for the best is not a budget-affecting policy.
Try, for example, with a contest where there is a small prize for all bowlers who bowl beyond 70mph. You would have plenty of youngsters taking the chance.
Figure out that among them you may scout someone who is really promising and give him the chance to try a short stint in an academy.
Word of mouth may turn out in hundreds of aspiring cricketers next time.

Blessing Muzarabani is a great talent. How many like him exist in Zimbabwe but nobody knows?

Give Zim youth a try with a low budget form of cricket, then you may have thousands of potential players from which to choose.

[ilovearsenal04]

Namibia completely rolled over by Sri Lanka, whats with these awful awful pitches?

[Googly]

Thats a done deal, Namibia 49/9
Their batting looks very ordinary. Their bowling was sharp.

Hard to tell on these pitches.

[sam_ahm]

Zimbabwe play both their games at Kimberly. I agree that playing an extra batter here might be a good option for whatever it's worth.

It also opens up the games a bit though. You can run through the opposition even if they are stronger than you and then who knows what can happen!

[eugene]

Namibia of course have geographical issues that ZImbabwe doesn't, the country is very large and sparsely populated. The white population is mostly concentrated in a few urban centres, but not entirely. I wonder how they keep track of rural talent?