I like the idea of consolidating 20 or so schools as sort of cricket "centres of excellence" as it were - funnel the talented young players into those centres.
I also agree, yes, schools like Churchill, Chaplin, Fletcher, Milton, etc. should be priority for re-vamping of facilities. They've been allowed in some cases to go to rack and ruin.
BUT, i still believe that the poorer rural children should be encouraged to play. They could still produce players of world class talent.Let's try to spread the game even if its a tape ball cricket version that the Indian kids play.
The comment about the 11th hour made me laugh. Haha. The 11th hour has come and loooong gone methinks.
Again I disagree, we need to get less guys playing better. What we think is talent here is mediocrity in other places. It's a complete waste of time and money and it's just a pathetic publicity stunt. Even if you find a good person to coach we've proven we can't bring those guys to headquarters and make them world class so what's the point? The people who want to play or have been identified as having potential must go to the few schools that do play and there we must have the correct coaching and facilities. Never in a million years will some Zimbabwe level 1 coach in Gokwe create a world class batsman, they don't have the skills or the facilities and the kid won't get the exposure he needs. Never has a player been "found" without the dedicated coach who has brought him/her on. It's the quality coaches we need first. They bring on the good players, not the other way around. If you find me a quality junior coach who has been coaching a particular group of kids a few times a week for a couple of years there I will show you one or two decent youngsters. There are maybe one or two coaches that meet this criteria in the entire country, which is why there are maybe less than 10 good juniors. Sorry but this is the ugly truth. In addition to this there's usually a parent who puts in the hard yards as well, i don't think there are many world class sportsmen out there that made it without massive parental support.
Having said all of that, ZC will continue wasting its time and money punting this dead end strategy. Fortunately they don't waste more than a few hundred dollars a year and the price of a half witted grade 8 "journalist" that would publish a story about an alien invasion if you paid him 10 bucks. This is not rocket science. If you just pick some supremely talented young cricketers that are doing well, just do the homework on what has made them good and copy it. It requires skilled, dedicated coaches and some half decent facilities. I keep talking about this because no one seems to grasp the importance.
We have dead end first class players that never even made a single hundred at our school level playing cricket and people think that one day they might be good? Not in this lifetime or the next. There's been much talk about Mangongo's u19 squad, I'm rooting for them, but there's no one there that's done enough at school level to be really exceptional. Our school coaching is woeful and our age group coaches, with a couple of exceptions, are not much better.
Out of interest, how many subcontinent players come from the slums and learn cricket on the streets? Are most Indian international products of elite schooling and facilities?
Neil Johnson, Alistair Campbell, Murray Goodwin, Andy Flower (w), Grant Flower, Dave Houghton, Guy Whittall, Heath Streak (c), Andy Blignaut, Ray Price, Eddo Brandes
I've spent some time looking on the net and nearly all the rags to riches stories involve kids whose parents were keen on cricket and played with them as kids and then got them into clubs where a coach mentored them. Even in India with their huge population it seems not a single top player was found playing in the bush or a slum by a loitering level 1 coach and became a star. I'm talking about batters, not bowlers. ZC is onto something, we can be the first.
For all we know the next Brett Lee is in the Hwange bush.
Neil Johnson, Alistair Campbell, Murray Goodwin, Andy Flower (w), Grant Flower, Dave Houghton, Guy Whittall, Heath Streak (c), Andy Blignaut, Ray Price, Eddo Brandes
eugene wrote:For all we know the next Brett Lee is in the Hwange bush.
Yes and of course as a cricket lover, I love the idea of spreading the game simply for the fact that I'd like my countrymen to enjoy the game as much as I do!
You never know Googly, in a generation a poor father who has a passion for the game learned in his childhood could coach his son, or daughter to cricketing greatness.
I like your optimism for Zim. Unless something monumentally good happens in 2017 our shit is nostril deep, and I'm not talking cricket. As everyone points out, cricket needs a functioning economy to survive and I'm not sure we will have one with this bond note issue. I was looking up most corrupt and poorest countries and whilst we're on the list we are by no means the worst. I think it's because we still have some infrastructure, but those lists are not up to date. We are almost a test case for having a barely functioning monetary system. Time for sport and leisure takes a back seat when you are struggling to put food on the table. To think that one of our big earners is diaspora money shows the shit we are in. We have to limp along to the 2018 elections and pray something good comes out of it. The run in to those elections is going to be really ugly. Anyway hope you have a good party tonight.
It did not occur to me previously (or rather I never thought about it, tbh) that in Zim "coloured" constitutes a distinct identity. Would you say that this is, beyond the colour of one's skin, also a question of languages? Do "coloureds" generally speak English. Or are they just as likely to speak Shona or Ndebele as their mother tongue?
Bulawayo Boy wrote:You never know Googly, in a generation a poor father who has a passion for the game learned in his childhood could coach his son, or daughter to cricketing greatness.
It seems to be a cliché that cricket does not, as yet, run in black families. I recently came across this interview with a young age group player from PE, Tapinawashe Hungwe: http://www.pachikoro.co.zw/2016/09/five ... he-hungwe/
PM: Who taught you the rules of the game?
TH: My father.
PM: How old were you when you first played cricket?
TH: I started playing cricket when I was three, at five I played at Bible Temple Preschool before moving to Eaglesvale for grade one.
PM: Who taught you the rules of the game?
DM: My father Daniel and my older brother Jack, it`s a family sport so it just runs in the blood as it is inherited.
