Afghanistan Tour of Zimbabwe Thread

[zimfan1]

White ball squads announced. One could argue that they are stronger than Pakistan in the spin department

Afghanistan squad for Zimbabwe ODIs

Hashmatullah Shahidi (capt), Rahmat Shah (vice-capt), Rahmanullah Gurbaz (wk), Ikram Alikhil (wk), Abdul Malik, Sediqullah Atal, Darwish Rasooli, Azmatullah Omarzai, Mohammad Nabi, Gulbadin Naib, Rashid Khan, Nangyal Kharoti, AM Ghazanfar, Mujeeb Ur Rahman, Fazalhaq Farooqi, Bilal Sami, Naveed Zadran and Farid Ahmad Malik

Afghanistan squad for Zimbabwe T20Is

Rashid Khan (capt), Rahmanullah Gurbaz (wk), Mohammad Ishaq (wk), Sediqullah Atal, Hazratullah Zazai, Mohammad Nabi, Darwish Rasooli, Zubaid Akbari, Gulbadin Naib, Karim Janat, Azmatullah Omarzai, Nangyal Kharoti, Mujeeb Ur Rahman, Noor Ahmad, Fazal Haq Farooqi, Fareed Ahmad and Naveen Ul Haq

[Pat_Bee]

Luckily it’s at HSC and the extra support will help our boys win both series as per the presser.

[secretzimbo]

Afghanistan are pretty much a better side than Pakistan

[Pat_Bee]

We’ll get murdered green label for everyone on the balcony at another job well done.

[Pat_Bee]

Old BC, JC and NW still not done enough on the franchise circuit to put their hands up. PONI’s Wez and Faraz will need more time in the side because they’ve got bags of unlocked potential.

[Kriterion_BD]

Afghanistan are pretty much a better side than Pakistan

Afghanistan are about as good as the full strength Pakistan side, might even be slightly better and a bit more well balanced.

[mnelson68]

A great opportunity to bring in fresh talent who deserve opportunities but they will stick with the same players and get what they deserve again.

[tawac]

Nick Welch will get a chance back in national colours in this series.

[Googly]

They're saying these are our best squads for the 2027 WC so they should stick with them. Why call in new players at the 11th hour that have had zero prep? That's deliberately setting them up for failure.

Don't forget Mangongo was the coach and supposed selector of the Africa Games squad and NW never got a single game. Interesting that when he did actually have a bit of a say he immediately made him captain
Equally interesting- he's been moved aside.
Jarvis only noticed Patel was playing franchise after a month? Gimme a break! Maybe he was on holiday? Did he turn a blind eye to Romario Roach, Knackers and the Singo boys?

NW can't make that Africa games starting line up and can't even make the Regionals so to put him in the Zim side, or anyone else for that matter, at this late hour would be sabotaging them. Did I just give ZC a good idea?

Let's see how Madande, Musekiwa, Faraz, Wes, Myers, Gumbie and Bennett fare against Rashid and Co. They've been in camp for a long time, been on The Merlin (jokes!), had multiple internationals against Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda, Pakistan , Mozambique etc and will be as ready as they will ever be.

The one upside on X is that Maru is making progress, and I think he is, after 15 ODI's and 36 T20i's. That now makes him half way to being an experienced player.
He didn't play one stupid help it round the corner shot yesterday either! Maybe someone read my incessant posts about that shot

Clive has had 16 ODI's and 33 T20i's. He can start to be classified as semi- experienced.

With these two "new" guys we should start seeing rapid progress...if they're capable. Put Madande up the order, he's absolutely not a finisher, let's see if he's front-line. Give him another 20 games in ea format and if he doesn't step up they need to look elsewhere.
Maru will end up being a better finisher actually, but the nasty exposure up front is good for him.

Dion has had 8 ODI's and 18 T20i's.
Brian has had 3 ODI's and 21 T20i's.
They're some of the way to being experienced T20 players now.

Although some of these games have been against weaker opposition, enabling them to stat pad big time, they are a lot more pressure and they're under a lot more scrutiny. When Zolsky points out stats he omits this rather important point about stat padding.

I did see that Frank was saying an all-white team was never going to happen. Nobody wants an all-white team where does he get that from?
We want our best team and that's definitely not 11 whites
Unfortunately whites loom so large that more than 3 starts looking all-white. How ZC views whites as regression is no longer shared by the rest of the country. Fans are fickle and they're now looking to re-integration. Don't get me wrong, if a couple of our black batters make runs they'll be straight back on the ZC bus If the whites and blacks fail they'll go back to looking at Ballance, BT, Cartwright, Goodwin Jr, Muyeye, Byrom and fast tracking Asian dudes. If that fails theres always the tried and trusted debilitating effects of colonisation. It's just all round panic, years after they irreparably broke the system.

In my view amongst the younger batters Dion, Bhawa and Maru will go on and hopefully hold their own internationally. I have doubts over Musekiwa, Madande and Wes. Wes probably has the skillset but his head is shot.
Kamunhukamwe has a long shot. Very destructive, but he's currently (current form!!) hit or miss domestically and I just think against quality bowling he gets himself in a knot. That's a hard thing to undo.

Amongst the slightly older guys I rate Joylord, his defensive technique really stacks up. There's TK, Kaitano, Munyonga, Chari, the Kaia bros, Maruma (they badly mismanaged Timycen, he's got crazy ability), Shumba, Mire and a couple of others. These guys have had some opportunities, probably have close to the requisite skill set, but struggle with international pressure. I watched Maruma once in a club game misread a seamer and was getting on his front foot, changed his mind, punched it off the back foot and still had time for a cup of tea. He's got amazing time on the ball. Very very skillful player.

They've dredged up the Alistair Campbell 2 year thing which is just bizarre. Well not that bizarre because that was the era where certain folk felt, or were, hard done by. People will never agree on that and how on earth is it relevant 30 years later? Just admit you're here to settle old scores against players who had nothing to do with it and be done with it. Be honest once.

Who are the white players that everyone is currently shouting about? Well that's simple- Curran, Welchx2 and Jonno Campbell.
Curran has definitely improved this year. Plus he's played high level cricket in England for more than a decade. Him and NW have faced so many quality international bowlers over the years. They've both had their moments.

NW most certainly never had a fair crack of the whip there or here. Nobody knows his ceiling. He's been plagued with bad injuries as well that cost him at least a season. The Curran name has opened a lot more doors for Ben. I think Ben is limited to opening and he's looking very good this year. It's a game of mm and Ben has definitely gone up a level. Very susceptible to a ball going across him early on. His pull shots off a ball that is not too short has made him tough to bowl at.
NW can bat anywhere and is very destructive. He had a terrible season last year, hard to explain, but he's been going really well for months now. Clearly susceptible to LBW's, poor and otherwise
When we have Madande and Musekiwa rated as better finishers than NW people don't know what they're talking about, not that he's a finisher, he's a
1-5 depending on the format.

Jonno just keeps churning out the runs domestically and he's now batting higher up the order for Rocks.
This technical glitch they're talking about is just weird. Did Salamander tell him or God forbid try and fix it or did he just hear it on a Kwirirai podcast? Most batters have a weakness, ours more than most. If you can have Burl, Madande, Wes and Musekiwa in as middle order then Campbell at some point deserves another opportunity. He looks to be improving every year to me. He surely has to be in the mix?

MW- As a stroke maker he's possibly close to being our best player. That's a big statement but he's played a few innings where experienced pros have said wtf are we watching here? Obviously not the finished article as he's only just 21 and has barely had any international exposure. At some point in the distant future we might see him in national colours and another season domestically to learn and consolidate his game further will stand him in good stead. We've seen what happens when you chuck a guy in that's not quite ready- you destroy him. BUT in the meantime he should be under someone like Houghton or BT in an HPC preparing him. That's clearly not happening. We have the facilities and the personnel yet ZC seems incapable of this very simple task. Mr H, you're on 10k a month please coach young Matthew and a couple of these other promising guys once a week because he looks really really sharp. He'd be earning 2k an hour! Not bad.

Some of these good guys are happy to coach you at 40-50 an hour when they know you earn 300 a month though I think they've given up on let's make Zim Cricket Great Again

[Googly]

Kriterion
Any opinion what Jay Shah's tenure might bring?