#ZCBOARD MUST GO

[Googly]

25 July 2019
The Minister of Youth, Sport, Arts and Recreation The Honourable Kirsty Coventry
Cnr Kwame Nkrumah & 4th Street
HARARE
Honourable Minister
APPEAL ON SUSPENSION
As a follow-up to the meeting I had with you last week, I write to you, on behalf of the Zimbabwe senior men’s national cricket team, to appeal for your urgent intervention in the wake of Zimbabwe’s suspension by the International Cricket Council (ICC).
I presume you are aware that, as a result of suspension, ICC funding to Zimbabwe Cricket (ZC) has been frozen and representative teams and players from Zimbabwe have been barred from participating in all ICC-sanctioned events.
Honourable Minister, the consequences have been catastrophic: the national women’s team tour to Netherlands and Ireland was cancelled because there was no money for airfares and allowances, while four women players, as well as their coach, who had been chosen to be part of a global development squad were barred from travelling to the United Kingdom for the ICC programme.
Yet, at this stage the whole issue has regrettably been reduced to a contest of who has the strongest argument or who has the power, when what is at stake are human lives and the very future of the game.
Honourable Minister, what is at stake are the lives of hundreds of ZC employees: cricketers – male and female – match officials, groundsmen, security guards, general hands, the secretariat and the executive.
Right now, they are struggling because they are yet to receive their June salaries. Soon it will be end of July and that will make it two months without pay. We have

rentals or mortgages to pay. Some are building homes. We have families to feed. We have school fees to pay.
We cannot continue with our honest trade of being professional cricketers because the groundsmen are not maintaining facilities and the support staff are also not coming to work because of incapacitation due to non-payment.
The tragedy of all this, Honourable Minister, is that the non-payment is not because there is no money. The money is there.
The ICC is withholding the money and in their first e-mail to the Interim Committee Chairman, Mr Dave Ellman-Brown, they clearly pointed out that they were holding onto the salaries and all the other monies due to Zimbabwe while awaiting the decision of the ICC London meeting.
That meeting was held, and we now know the position. The suspension can only be lifted when the Sports and Recreation Commission (SRC) reinstates the ZC board led by Mr Tavengwa Mukuhlani. It is important to note that ICC, as the world cricket governing body, has made its ruling and at this stage it is pointless to argue whether they were right or not.
The SRC Chairman, Mr Gerald Mlotshwa, has publicly stated that they do have contingency plans.
Honourable Minister, as a distinguished Olympian you would be aware that if you are suspended from competing at the Olympics, no contingency plans can be there for you because there is only one IOC.
With due respect, the SRC needs to see and feel for our dreams as athletes, our ambitions as cricketers and the lives of all those employed in cricket.
For all that, there can be no contingency plans!
But we are imploring you, pleading with you, Honourable Minister, to speak and, more importantly, to act!

We believe you will not want the Zimbabwe women’s cricket team not to play in their Qualifier end of this month, or us not to tour Bangladesh in September for a triangular series that is key to our doing well in the ICC T20 World Cup Qualifier in October.
We do not get to tour often so when we do we have to maximise it, moreso since we failed last year to qualify for the World Cup which has just been played in England we plan to leave no stone unturned in making it to the next major event, which is the ICC T20 World Cup.
That is vital for the progress and sustenance of the game of cricket in Zimbabwe.
Therefore, non-participation is not an option simply because the ZC board which the ICC wants reinstated would have remained suspended by the SRC.
This is why in my meeting with you I requested you to meet the ZC Chairman and afford him the opportunity to address issues raised by the SRC because for now all that we hear as players are just accusations of corruption, of theft, of bad governance. If there are suspicions surely we have police, ZACC and many other offices that can investigate, instead of this heavy-handed ruling that now risks killing the game and, in the process, our lives!
Faced with similar allegations last year, your predecessor Minister Kazembe Kazembe asked the SRC, then led by Mr Edward Siwela, to have ZC audited. That was done because we could see the auditors in the offices. We humbly request you Minister to get this audit from the SRC and publicise the findings.
Honourable Minister, we say Zimbabwe is open for business. Having ZC suspended and then banned, isolated from the cricket world, cannot be ‘open for business’! Allowing ICC foreign currency into the country is open for business.
What we have been doing – hosting tours, touring, competing in ICC events, raising the Zimbabwe flag, having Zimbabwe mentioned in the non-demonising terms of politics – is promoting His Excellency’s mantra.
And talking about His Excellency: the President officially opened the global men’s Qualifier we hosted last year. The biggest crowds ever seen at a cricket match

attended. You visited Harare Sports Club. This year, in your absence on maternity leave, Minister Kazembe Kazembe came to HSC and congratulated the women for qualifying for Scotland.
This talk of us starting afresh is not as easy as it sounds. If we are banned, we have to re-apply for membership. If that application is accepted, we go in at the bottom and then have to work our way up with consistently competitive performances to Full Member status and the revenue we have been receiving.
In the meantime, I wish to have it on record that our meeting last week was the first official communication by the Zimbabwe senior men’s team since the suspension of the ZC board by the SRC.
I am doing this because it has come to my attention that there are some players who have been making statements saying they are speaking on behalf of the team. Their actions are divisive and in fact compromised change-room harmony during our tour of Netherlands and Ireland.
As the Zimbabwe senior men’s cricket team captain, I also dissociate the team from the actions of those players who were seen at the ICC meeting in London. They were clearly there for their own ends as they had not been sent by the team and so could not have been representing it.
Once again, we ask for your intervention, Honourable Minister, in the spirit that hailed your appointment as we all expected that you would ensure sport always carries the day.
Sport. Not suspension. Not banning. Not killing our careers. Not ending our livelihoods.
Thank you.
HAMILTON MASAKADZA
Zimbabwe Senior Men’s Cricket Team Captain

[brmtaylor.com admin]

“You never quite expect it to the extent of getting suspended,” he says. “One wonders – maybe it’s a blessing in disguise; maybe we just need a whole whitewash and a start from zero.”

Interesting that the players are thinking along those lines too.

I think that's pretty much all that can happen at this point to be honest.

[Googly]

It would seem to be the end of the line for the players he’s alluding to if ZC are reinstated.

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This government and many other third world ones actually expect to just receive funding ad Infinitum from well intentioned donor agencies. It’s tightened up a lot as there’s donor fatigue from the wholesale theft and mismanagement of it. Here we’ve played East and against West for many years as we’re supposedly strategic, but that has worn thin as well. We’re a strategic shithole. This situation is not that different.
Once again Mukhulani should never have slimed off to them, he’s potentially engineered our demise if SRC don’t relent, or it may backfire if the SRC pulls a rabbit out the hat.

[kudet]

Hamilton masakadza Worte a letter to minister Coventry. Quite unfortunate that i cant Upload it here, couldnt find where to attach it

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Wrote**

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Kudet it’s above.

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Shows u don’t read the shit I post

[brmtaylor.com admin]

It would seem to be the end of the line for the players he’s alluding to if ZC are reinstated.

It's been obvious for weeks that the players have been divided. Sadly it looks to be the same old story as well.

[kudet]

Ah ja saw it just now, thanks. I Think its the end of the road for Taylor and raza. I dont see how they are getting out of this with makoni and mukuhlani at the Helm. Kind of expected this response from hami, he is their Poster Boy.