Schools T20 Comp

[zimfan1]

Competition involving Zimbabwe schools and a school from Namibia and one from South Africa.

All games being live streamed. Daniel Erasmas looks quick.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wt2QDgufpCY

[Googly]

My first look at Pettican who comes highly rated, maybe I'm catching him on an off day, they want nothing to do with Erasmus, who's only bowling at half pace.
Neither he nor Connor Grant are in that u 19 squad. I think Erasmus is off to the States on an athletics scholarship, but quite why Grsnt is not in the squad is a mystery. Maybe they'll have a rethink after this tournament.

The standard is woeful.

[Googly]

It's the equivalent of u15 cricket 10 years ago, thats how bad this has gotten.

[secretzimbo]

Jeez I watched some yesterday and it is alarming. How old is Grant? Too old for the next WC in Jan 2024? Pettican is supposed to be very good, but he's also not in the latest u19 squad. He plays several different sports though.

There's a handful of quite promising players but the depth is non-existent, it's quite scary. Also must be the worst Falcon team for some years in particular.

[secretzimbo]

Patel is highly tipped. Although they stick around even less than white players.

[Googly]

Jeez I watched some yesterday and it is alarming. How old is Grant? Too old for the next WC in Jan 2024? Pettican is supposed to be very good, but he's also not in the latest u19 squad. He plays several different sports though.

There's a handful of quite promising players but the depth is non-existent, it's quite scary. Also must be the worst Falcon team for some years in particular.

Its dire, trust me on that. I popped in hoping someone would get my attention, but I can't go back. We used to see some fantastic cricket, but there's no plan.

[sloandog]

The standard on that video looked dreadful

[secretzimbo]

Even the visiting Namibian school has won a couple of matches so far. That would have been unthinkable a few years ago.

Bad state of affairs.

[Googly]

5 odd years ago we were watching Tawanda Muyeye scoring 175 against a decent attack and battling it out with Gerald Coetzee.
8 or 9 years ago we were watching Ngidi bowling 143kph at a 15 year old Nick Welch , now you've got guys dodging behind the square leg umpire facing 115.
11-12 years ago we were watching PJ smashing 16 six's out the park with a couple of thousand people at the George's ground.

There is just no way we are going to see anything like that again.

[Googly]

I'm on my soap box again-
I lied and tried watching a bit more because it was so grim and I was hoping it was just a bad day.
If the schools can't maintain a standard amongst our best 6 schools there is absolutely zero chance of getting anything going at this fictitious grass roots level. Nobody has ever given an adequate explanation of what grass roots cricket is You might find one or two talented kids at some disaster of a school, but who coaches them and who do they play against?
These big schools appear to have lost all interest in cricket.
When did we reach that tipping point where the standard has plummeted into an irrecoverable hole?
I recall Churchill loading their side with professional franchise players and still getting fucked up by a school team.
If a kid doesn't come into high school as a decent batsman the odds of him being any good are slim to none. We appear to have lost our entire cricketing culture somewhere along the line.
Everything starts from the top. With a national side in complete disarray the interest dies, if it remains in this state for decades it becomes extremely difficult to resurrect.
If we won the next two world cups it would 15 years before we see a decent crop of youngsters come through our broken school system.
Somebody needs to understand what's going on at these good schools and their feeder primary schools and they need to do something to save the day here.
This is waaay worse than I thought.