Talent retention- the way forward

[Googly]

Soccer in UK has different eligibility requirements.
In cricket you have to be a citizen, whether by birth or you have a foot in the door and do your time through a process called naturalisation. If you're over 18 it will take a minimum of 7 years, under 18 about 5.

[Googly]

For example Matt Welch, as Secret noted, has access to an ancestry visa, he'd have to go to the UK and play club cricket and work for 7 years before he became eligible for County cricket. In that time he'd have to make sure he kept his nose squeaky clean. No drinking, fighting or traffic offences. He'd be hard pressed

[Googly]

Mitchell could go immediately and get a county contract but wouldn't be eligible to play for England for 3 years because he played u19 for another member country.

[Tinah09]

I agree, but given the state of the country, that crude grassroots model could be the first place to start.e.g if you can find a 2m plus tall, lanky athletic fellow who can run 100m under 12-13 seconds, you immediately have something to work with. A half decent rugby, cricket (pref bowling) coach can make something out of the fellow. Do we have anyone in ZimCricket on the lookout for such wildcards. The little domestic cricket I have watched has lacked bowlers with those physical attributes (tall & athletic), which are ~essential for any world class seam/pace bowler. I guess batting is highly specialised and requires a lot of training, but unearthing the type of bowler(s) I’ve mentioned, via the “grassroots” shouldn’t be as difficult. We can’t be settling on chubby, potbellied “pace bowlers” huffing and puffing their way to 120km/hr and being touted as natl team material

[Tinah09]

Soccer in UK has different eligibility requirements.
In cricket you have to be a citizen, whether by birth or you have a foot in the door and do your time through a process called naturalisation. If you're over 18 it will take a minimum of 7 years, under 18 about 5.

Oh, thanks for clearing that up!! Damn, there are no loopholes for sure. We are going to keep losing talent and there’s nothing we can do about it

[Googly]

If I'm not mistaken someone (ZC?) once arranged a comp to try and find someone who could bowl 140.
To think you can find someone outside of cricket that could miraculously do that is sad. It's partly someone hoping for a miracle, but it mostly displays gross ignorance.

We (and SA) will more often than not end up with black bowlers and white batsmen because its the batting that has to be taken care of at an early age. You need to identify the good ones at an early age and they need skilled coaching, lots of exposure to older cricket, if they can cope with that, and if they can't they're actually not going to be good enough anyway, That usually requires a special person to take such a guy under his wing and those opportunities need to be available. They're not. Guys like old man Flower were blessings to Zim. The problem now is there are no schools good enough to take these boys. Find a youngster and where do you place him? Which coach in this new school is now going to give him one on one 4/5 days a week?

[Googly]

Soccer in UK has different eligibility requirements.
In cricket you have to be a citizen, whether by birth or you have a foot in the door and do your time through a process called naturalisation. If you're over 18 it will take a minimum of 7 years, under 18 about 5.

Oh, thanks for clearing that up!! Damn, there are no loopholes for sure. We are going to keep losing talent and there’s nothing we can do about it

What limited talent we have is only because ZC waves goodbye to them, they just don't care. The penny still hasn't dropped that you can't take a fairly good kid at 18, give him some net practice twice a week under the watchful eye of a coach sitting under a nearby tree and he will become Brian Lara. It takes a really talented kid to begin with and that kid has to hit 300 plus balls 4 days a week to have a sniff of a chance. Then he needs a set of cast iron nuts, and some way of dealing with the pressure early on and the pressure of failures. This combo leaves you not much to choose from.

[secretzimbo]

For example Matt Welch, as Secret noted, has access to an ancestry visa, he'd have to go to the UK and play club cricket and work for 7 years before he became eligible for County cricket. In that time he'd have to make sure he kept his nose squeaky clean. No drinking, fighting or traffic offences. He'd be hard pressed

Maybe I am reading this wrong, but why would Matt Welch have to do any of that? Nick is on the same visa and played County cricket immediately?

[secretzimbo]

Some of the discussion on the previous page about targeting poor communities and and stuff. I mean it worked twenty years ago, and a big chunk of our most successful black players were all from Highfield of course. I'm told kids playing street cricket there still happens, but I've no idea - It's not a place I've been to often, obviously!

But the easiest target first is the private schools and then maybe a small handful of the top government schools. Ultimately cricket is an extremely expensive sport - you need lots of equipment, lots of private coaching, and good facilities to make it to the top. Twenty years ago the ZCU had money and competency and so it filtered down from the rich white families and it penetrated into poorer communities as a result. Now we've got literally nothing, no infrastructure, very few coaches, very few facilities, very little money is spent on development. Few schools play.


We have to ensure the private schools that play cricket keep doing so to a high level, and really value the talent they produce. Then we need to make sure maybe 3 or 4 of the top gov schools are playing good quality cricket with good facilities and coaching.


We can dream of taking the game to the townships or the bush one day, but at the moment it's a million miles off. Fix the basics first, there is low hanging fruit and thats the upper classes, the private schools, the top gov schools.

[secretzimbo]

Quite a lot fo the current players are from poor backgrounds though, so we do get some talent. I know Blessing is from a particularly disadvantaged background. I'm sure many others are too