2022 U19 World Cup Thread

[Tinah09]

our club and franchise cricket does not foster "greatness."

Zimbabwe club and franchise cricket does not foster "greatness." umm, the same franchise cricket were former ICC world cricketer of the year Andy Flower honed his trade?, the same franchise cricket that produced Brendan Taylor? To this day, I have Asian and Australian cricket fans asking me about Douglas Anthony Marillier who retired donkey years ago and his unorthodox shots. whether you like it or not, a disproportionate number of Zimbabwean cricketers have made an impression in world cricket and unfortunately for you, theres nothing you can do about it, they sealed thier legacy, you can rewrite history to make yourself feel better.

I'm not getting into the wider discussion but I feel that stuff that happened 20+ years ago is highly irrelevant to today. There is no comparison between the domestic cricket and entire system of the 90's/early 2000's and today.

Today's system obviously does not foster greatness, that's why we are competing with Scotland and Ireland and being bypassed by Afghanistan and Bangladesh.

Bangladesh bypassed a lot of international cricket teams!!! Didn't they beat New Zealand at home in a test series a few days ago? Look at the ratings and tell me Bangladesh is shit! Of course ZimCricket domestic cricket its not as good/competitive as it was then, but if you can get 5 or so world class players from that tiny pool thats a good thing right?? Player like Taylor and Muzarabani did not make their mark 20+ years ago. Honestly do people on this forum have such short memories, Didn't Muzarabani win the EspnCricinfo Men's ODI Bowling Performance of the Year last year. Y'all have forgotten that already??. Where exactly does this young man play his cricket?
https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/espn ... an-1247852

We also seem suffer the "paradise lost" syndrome, where we imagine/invent a past that is rosier than it ever was. e.g. Streak is the only Zimbabwe fast bowler with over 100 Test wickets; his 216 leave Henry Olonga, the next best with 68, far behind. So, apart from Streak, Zimbabwe really hasn't produced a bone fide world class seam bowler stretching all the way to the 80's, 90's or whenever the domestic cricket golden years were. Streak has has 237 ODI wickets, no other fast bowler has 100 ODI wickets, with Tendai Chatara in second place on 95. Those are the facts, those are the products of our domestic cricket scene when put to test with the rest of the world. Cricket has become big business, countries will only compete with nations who they anticipate they can raise $$$ TV revenue, e.g. Australia is entertaining a terrible England team when they know perfectly well that their opponents are hilariously outmatched. Theres probably very little if any money to be made playing Zimbabwe, hence fellow poor bastards like Scotland are the only ones willing to play against us. I may be mistaken, but didnt Holland skimp out of a series against us? We arent getting games because theres no money to nbe made vs Zimbabwe and I dont think this has nothing to do with the standard of our domestic league

[secretzimbo]

Bangladesh bypassed a lot of international cricket teams!!! Didn't they beat New Zealand at home in a test series a few days ago? Look at the ratings and tell me Bangladesh is shit! Of course ZimCricket domestic cricket its not as good/competitive as it was then, but if you can get 5 or so world class players from that tiny pool thats a good thing right?? Player like Taylor and Muzarabani did not make their mark 20+ years ago. Honestly do people on this forum have such short memories, Didn't Muzarabani win the EspnCricinfo Men's ODI Bowling Performance of the Year last year. Y'all have forgotten that already??. Where exactly does this young man play his cricket?
https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/espn ... an-1247852

Taylor learnt his cricket around the turn of the century. He's 36. The same age as me. He grew up in a world class school system and junior cricket system. They don't exist here anymore. Back then I was nowhere near good enough to progress my cricket career sadly. Nowadays? If I was 16 in the same school today? I'd be the star of the show and people on this forum would be declaring me the second coming. I wasn't even in the top 20 at my school back then.

Fact is, if Taylor had played his international cricket through the same era that Flower did, Taylor probably would have been our greatest ever player by a long way. You're not telling me our system (and the various board trials and tribulations) didn't hold him back? He's one of the most naturally gifted cricketers the world has produced. If Zim Cricket had developed the way it should have done over the past twenty years he probably would have averaged 50 in all formats.

Muzarabani is great. So that's 1 person. Systems that 'foster greatness' don't just produce one great player every ten years. They produce ten every year!

We have a situation currently where our franchise games consist of 75% very good players. But unfortunately a quarter of the players are shit and have no business being at this level. I'm not the biggest doom monger on the forums at all btw. There's some good stuff in Zimbabwean cricket. It's not all terrible. But our system is much much worse than it was 20 years ago.

We continue to find the occasional gem here and there - Wesssly being the latest. That happens because as a country we are given an absolute fortune by the ICC each year (Far far far more than even Ireland or Afghanistan get) and other than soccer this is the richest sport in the country. Yeah, playing at franchise level is a struggle but if you can get to the national team contracts you are raking it in comparatively. So these kids from the ghetto are attracted, like Wes and Blessing. Wes developed greatly in South Africa of course, as well.


I'm not one of these people that says our franchise cricket is amateur level and that everything is collapsing and that cricket will be dead within five years. I think things are looking slightly more optimistic now than they were a few years ago for sure. But our system isn't great. It is a shadow of what it once was. If our system 'fostered greatness' then we'd be competing with other great systems like India, Austrlia, hell - even England! We aren't.

The really frustrating thing is that it wouldn't even be that difficult to improve things and get back to that level. It's possible, and that's why its frustrating.

[secretzimbo]

It honestly wouldn't even be that hard to fix.

1, We need to implement a coaching ethos and pathway at all levels and weed out the bad guys and cherish the good coaches (I'm hopeful this is Houghton's remit).
2, We need to sort out facilities and stop making guys play first class matches at grounds that don't even have toilets or showers. (Pro50 at Mutare last month). Especially schools - we need to get maybe 10 good schools (mix of gov and private) with good pitches, nets and coaches playing lots of fixtures at each age group.
3, We need to create a pathway and bridge the gap to create a seamless player journey from school cricket, to club cricket, to franchise cricket, to international cricket.

Until we have any of that in place, it's a fallacy to say our system is great.


Oh and ,
4, Get rid of all the self-interested corruptors still involved at various levels

[Tinah09]

It honestly wouldn't even be that hard to fix.

1, We need to implement a coaching ethos and pathway at all levels and weed out the bad guys and cherish the good coaches (I'm hopeful this is Houghton's remit).
2, We need to sort out facilities and stop making guys play first class matches at grounds that don't even have toilets or showers. (Pro50 at Mutare last month). Especially schools - we need to get maybe 10 good schools (mix of gov and private) with good pitches, nets and coaches playing lots of fixtures at each age group.
3, We need to create a pathway and bridge the gap to create a seamless player journey from school cricket, to club cricket, to franchise cricket, to international cricket.

Until we have any of that in place, it's a fallacy to say our system is great.


Oh and ,
4, Get rid of all the self-interested corruptors still involved at various levels

Couldn't have said it better myself, these improvements will definitely lead to a revival in ZimCricket!! I hope Dave Houghton is interested in leading this transformation, he's the only Zimbabwean I know who has a track record of building/reviving cricket institutions e.g. the academy that Vermuelen burn tom the ground.

[CalZim]

Back to the Canada game, no scorecard but a match report:

https://zimcricket.org/zimbabwe-beat-ca ... -up-clash/

[ZIMDOGGY]

Tinah you have this all skewed.
a lot of us habe been here a while and have seen the downfall.
You’re still a new user, albeit a decent thinker, so I’m wondering if you are across the history.
In a nutshell,
ZC was peaking in the late nineties, a word class ystem with great coaches that was able to churn out a few world class players alongside enough talent to churn out a formidable team. We saw it at the 1999 WC.
Then the 2001 farm invasions happened which directly ilpacyed the white cricket community and the country’s economy in general.
A lot of talented people (of all colours) started to pack their bags and flee.
Up until 2004 ZC was for the most part largely unaffected, as most cricketers (armband protestors aside) stayed.
The 2004 squad for the most part retained all the top tier talent, bar Flower,Olonga (who was on the downer Chatara style) Johnson Goodwin and a couple of others. More importantly, teams toured, facilities were maintained, the junior system was held in extremely high regard and in tact (if not for some depleted white community that left, we had sponsorships and ZC had a 6 million surplus.

Then In came Ozias Bvute who demanded the quota for blacks increase from 3 to 7/8. This obviously annoyed the playing group.
The logic at the time was Streak, Ervine, Bligs and G Flower were shoulders above the rest of the squad so what was the point of retaining and entertaining the wishes of Ewing,Marillier, Wishart, Carlisle, Gripper etc who were only just ahead the emerging black counterparts. Note that at this point Vermeulen became brain damaged after initially being successful and seen as a rising star, with a few centuries under his belt by then.
Streak was furious, Bvute didn’t even care about cricket so stuck to his guns and we had the 15 man exodus.
So 2005 ended the competitive Zim come and for all.
As the juniors were still good, the BT/Cremer/Elton/Willi generation were promoted well before their time. Talented players but years needed to mature.
From 2005 on The theft started.
Bvute and the cronies hacked and siphoned money out of the the organisation at an alarming rate. The economy was tanking and here was the last remaining cash cow in the country, and by 2010 they were well and truly broke and in debt, coaches were disregarded, silenced or chased away. The remaining coaches retired or died over the years (a notable one died 2 years back) and all sorts of drama from an elite level of board members who’s sole focus was the cash bag, with the functionality of cricket a sole focus.
Players went unpaid all throughout the ‘10s, snitches like Peosper were set up to silence players speaking up, BRMT and others were in and out of the team. Grounds were sold or left to rot. The school system left to rot. Clubs died, were kicked out or just had minimum effort places into it by management.
All sorts of dramas I’ve forgotten over the years. Players chased away. Talent who would be in our team have literally drifted into careers like selling cars and not cricket. Sponsors don’t want to give them the money.
There’s literally a breakaway Harare league privately managed and sponsored that pulls in all the best players from the ‘00s. You’ll be astounded at the names on the scorecards.

In short, the system that created Andy Flower and BRMT are long gone. The junior system crumbled between 2005 and 2009 and now it’s just a side game that’s propped up with some decent schools and enthusiastic coaches and do players that remain. In spite of ZC and not because of it.

[secretzimbo]

It honestly wouldn't even be that hard to fix.

1, We need to implement a coaching ethos and pathway at all levels and weed out the bad guys and cherish the good coaches (I'm hopeful this is Houghton's remit).
2, We need to sort out facilities and stop making guys play first class matches at grounds that don't even have toilets or showers. (Pro50 at Mutare last month). Especially schools - we need to get maybe 10 good schools (mix of gov and private) with good pitches, nets and coaches playing lots of fixtures at each age group.
3, We need to create a pathway and bridge the gap to create a seamless player journey from school cricket, to club cricket, to franchise cricket, to international cricket.

Until we have any of that in place, it's a fallacy to say our system is great.


Oh and ,
4, Get rid of all the self-interested corruptors still involved at various levels

Couldn't have said it better myself, these improvements will definitely lead to a revival in ZimCricket!! I hope Dave Houghton is interested in leading this transformation, he's the only Zimbabwean I know who has a track record of building/reviving cricket institutions e.g. the academy that Vermuelen burn tom the ground.

I'm glad we agree! Thankfully there are still enough people who know this is possible and still have the belief and passion, and thats why cricket keeps going here and hasn't completely collapsed. Unfortunately not many of them are in positions of influence at the moment.

But I really believe it's possible, I don't think we are miles away. Houghton coming in to sort the coaching is really promising. I just hope they don't target or blame him as soon as anything goes wrong. His coach education role is going to take several years to see any results.

The next thing is to restart school cricket - fuck Covid - and put a huge effort into that. That's where it starts, the three basics: - coaching, facilities, schools. You can't expect the professional system to be great if the foundations aren't great.

[Googly]

When I was talking club cricket I didn't mean County. Bawa will never be eligible for County unless there's a major rule change.
Prodigy implies something beyond merely excellent. It's actually a term that shouldn't be used in cricket because of the nature of the game. You brand someone a prodigy or a starlet and he's doomed to failure.
He's probably had 40 plus games with only one 50. That's not a prodigy, that's a guy who needs help with his batting and mental approach, that's a long slump in form.
He's one of about half a dozen really promising young batsmen we've produced in the last 5 years though and has huge potential. He's a guy we need in our system, he may well have the potential to play for our national side, but he's going to have to up his game big time and he's going to need to think about turning his arm over. Men's cricket is very different, you need to offer two strings to your bow unless you are an exceptional batsman. We need openers, anyone with sense must know that, either focus on that or learn how to bowl as well. Opening is the toughest gig there is, it's huge mental pressure.

I don't see why him being the first black batter to get a ton in the u19 wc is that important. Its nice, but we're 30 years in from independence, ffs get over it, when that stuff goes unnoticed we've turned a corner. Guys dining off one big innings amidst more than their fair share of failures is part of the problem, we celebrate mediocrity here. One very good innings in three is the yardstick of a top batsman.

Blessing's bowling was dramatically improved by his county stint. Anyone who thinks otherwise has their head in the sand. Had he not spent time there he would still not be running in in a straight line. Hard yards in County helped him big time, so no, he didnt learn his trade here.

The "paradise lost" syndrome is real unfortunately. That team that walked out played the top sides in the world fairly regularly. People compare their stats with the current crop, but they were up against the best teams so it's not apples for apples. They did stop the continuity of our cricket dead in its tracks though and we've never really recovered from that. What has really imploded is our school system, there's no recovering that as its partly linked to stuff outside of cricket. We had the best school sports system going, it was incredible.
Having said that- if we dominated at the level we currently find ourselves at now and some individuals put in some regular and world class performances there would be renewed interest. That's not going to magically happen though. We need administrative changes to stand half a chance. We miraculously produce the players with the potential to be really good, but the environment is not conducive to bring out the best in them, or of course they try their luck elsewhere.
. There are current players that would be thereabouts in that team. Muzarabani, Masakadza, Ervine, BT and Chatara. Cricket has moved on and mostly improved, and us older guys do tend to perhaps think that eras gone by were better than they were- Test cricket definitely was though.
Taylor and Masakadza in that Flower era would have been extraordinary, particularly Taylor. They'd have both remained slim and would have plundered.

Once again- we are not bankable because we are not putting up a fight against the big teams BECAUSE our domestic system is not strong enough. Its THE stand out reason. It is almost impossible to make the jump from mediocre domestic cricket to top flite international stuff, you're in miracle territory. If you had a stand out squad of 15 players by some act of God, and they had a very full international schedule you'd maybe paper over the cracks for a while. We are competing with Scotland and Ireland who get a tiny fraction of the money we receive. There's something very very wrong with that picture.

The one really important thing we need to do here is play more cricket. Even if the standard is not fantastic you can substitute a small portion of that with volume. Guys need to play 40 plus games a year ideally. That alone would improve the standard significantly. Guys would play smarter cricket and learn their own games better. You'd also see a true reflection of ability and form and there would be less musical chairs for spots.

[Marshmallow]

https://www.espncricinfo.com/series/icc ... cket-score

live score update of zim u19 vs Ban u19

[Googly]

It honestly wouldn't even be that hard to fix.

1, We need to implement a coaching ethos and pathway at all levels and weed out the bad guys and cherish the good coaches (I'm hopeful this is Houghton's remit).
2, We need to sort out facilities and stop making guys play first class matches at grounds that don't even have toilets or showers. (Pro50 at Mutare last month). Especially schools - we need to get maybe 10 good schools (mix of gov and private) with good pitches, nets and coaches playing lots of fixtures at each age group.
3, We need to create a pathway and bridge the gap to create a seamless player journey from school cricket, to club cricket, to franchise cricket, to international cricket.

Until we have any of that in place, it's a fallacy to say our system is great.


Oh and ,
4, Get rid of all the self-interested corruptors still involved at various levels

Couldn't have said it better myself, these improvements will definitely lead to a revival in ZimCricket!! I hope Dave Houghton is interested in leading this transformation, he's the only Zimbabwean I know who has a track record of building/reviving cricket institutions e.g. the academy that Vermuelen burn tom the ground.

There are a few people that would make a difference, but they're not wanted because they're the wrong colour, have a history and are not grovelling yes men.

Of course Houghton is interested. He has the respect of the board and he's next in line when Ratshit fails a dozen more times. At some point they have to call time on this leech.
Then Houghton will presumably get the nod, then he will be right in the firing line of all the shenanigans and it remains to be seen how he will handle that. Will his formidable reputation hold sway, will he butt heads or will he take the Ratshit route?