The issue of race - we are all Zim fans!

[Googly]

Practically every major government school played cricket in the past and produced national age groupers. Flower came from Vainona! Even Marlborough produced good cricketers.
I get seriously annoyed when Makoni makes a song and dance of wasting money on kit in Muzarabani or wherever it was and you have unplayable fields at Churchill for example. It's just a pretence to attempt to show that they are spreading the game and I hope no one buys into it. Absolutely clueless!!

[Googly]

Milton produced good cricketers, Chaplin in Gweru, Jameson in Kadoma, Mutare High School etc etc. Why would you want to go rural when you have fields, facilities and schools that were amazing and now lie in ruins? Do you want to give these up and level a field in Buhera and dump some kit there with a reporter showing what an astonishing job ZC are doing taking the game to the people? We can't even provide the existing coaches with decent practice balls for goodness sake!!

[brmtaylor.com admin]

I don't think discussing race is a bad thing. Some people do ham it up a bit to be humorous but I don't think anyone here is actually racist. Cricket is a colonial sport and Zimbabwe is a post-colonial country. That makes for some very interesting discussions I think. Seeing some white faces in the Zimbabwe cricket team is an interesting remnant of a colonial past.

While on the subject - and maybe this is something Googly or gargamel has some insight about as I'm sure there's some historical reason behind it - does anyone know why the coloured community seems to be quite well represented in the Zim Womens team? Like Mayers and Granger and probably someone else that I'm forgetting. Whereas in the mens team has there ever been anyone else besides Rainsford?

[Googly]

I don't know much about the Ladies' team, but would bet those ladies would be from Bulawayo, which has a big coloured community. The coloured guys don't seem that interested in cricket, I think most of them are really keen on basketball. Back in my day a lot of the coloured guys in Harare went to Morgan Junior and High School and they played cricket. I'm not sure if it's even still operational. St. George's has had lots of coloured guys throughout the years, and they still play a bit, but don't seem to make it into age group levels. There was a St John's pupil in about 2012 called Lindsay who was a superb cricketer, but I don't know what happened to him. In fact he was one of those gifted guys that was good at everything, a real athlete. There aren't many young Indian guys coming through either, which is strange. Many of the Indian guys go to Westridge school in Harare. Obviously the Indian community have money so in theory their cricket should be decent, but they are surprisingly weak. In the old days the rivalry between Universals and Sunrise (the Moslems and the Hindus) both in hockey and cricket used to be well worth watching. Somewhere along the line they have stopped being competitive, maybe it's a numbers thing as well as in sure lots of families have left.

[Googly]

I know it's probably of little interest but in the 70's and 80's there were quite a few Indians at St George's, which is a staunchly Roman Catholic school. A fine melting pot of Hindus, Moslems, blacks, whites and coloureds.

[watermelon]

Coloureds really need to wake up to themselves.

[brmtaylor.com admin]

Good observation Googly, they are both in fact Bulawayo born. Are there any enclaves in Bulawayo? When I was in Harare it was pointed out to me that Sunningdale and Arcadia are coloured strongholds.

[Googly]

Ya there are enclaves everywhere, we're no different to any other place. People of similar race, religion and financial standing naturally group together.

[ZIMDOGGY]

Ya there are enclaves everywhere, we're no different to any other place. People of similar race, religion and financial standing naturally group together.

Up until recently, I got the impression there was not many white enclave in Zim.

They seem to have pooled together now at least in Harare, but for a large part they seemed fairly spread out, like mayo on toast.

Probably a Farming thing.
I like it though, i think it will becool going to a couple of neighbourhoods in zimbabwe with a colonial old english feel, adds variety.
Hardcore hhm/Conant black panther types shouldnt mind it either as they are all bunched up in a corner and you can go day to day without seeing a white face if you dont go through those two suburbs. Win win.

[TapsC]

Lindsay was definitely a huge loss. the problem was he made Zimbabwe cricket, hockey,rugby tennis and athletics at junior level at one point or the other and eventually got an athletics scholarship to the USA if I'm not mistaken. which is what ZC should be doing if we ever want to survive.we have to partner universities around the world to groom and educate these guys so that they dont feel like if they don't make the senior team their lives are over.

as for transformation I feel like it has to happen but the mistake people make is that they don't realize its a process which can take 25 odd years and needs a huge amount of resources to actually put the infrastructure and coaching in place in the rural areas. something we do not have. forcing things using quoatas will never work in my opinion and just produces generations of sub standard cricketers. if you just give yourselves more time you will find the class cricketers and slowly introduce them. we are already a small population with an even smaller player pool. if we ever want to be more than competitive and actually win things then we need to get more guys playing