Stuart Matsikenyeri

[gargamel]

Matsi hands down was and is a better player than Waller. Waller is at best a legacy child who got all the pushes and selections that Matsis was never given. Matsi is like many great black players one who came way before their time and thrust into national service in the worst era of Zim cricket history. With odds stacked against him he did his best and achieved some great success. He was a justifiable selection in our last world cup side as he topped the ODi competition showing his class after not being in any serious level cricket as a coach at a school in RSA.

T

[zimbofan88]

Matsi hands down was and is a better player than Waller. Waller is at best a legacy child who got all the pushes and selections that Matsis was never given. Matsi is like many great black players one who came way before their time and thrust into national service in the worst era of Zim cricket history.

Taylor, Williams and Cremer were also thrown into the side before their time. They all developed into fine cricketers. While guys like Matsi and Vusi struggled all their lives. From that lot Taibu was the best black cricketer we ever had. After that Hami, Chigs and Chakabva were decent, but rest were all hopeless.

[Detective RDS]

Vusimuzi Sibanda at least showed some glimpses of his talent and has 2 ODI centuries to his credit where Stuart Matsikenyeri has none. Matsikenyeri has played double the ODIs Malcolm Waller has played. Matsikenyeri was given all the selections and played 113 ODIs, how many more chances he is expected to get ! Matsikenyeri got more chances than he deserved but just couldn't step up.

[eugene]

Matsi was a good domestic player, nothing more. He always seemed out of his depth, unlike someone like Sibanda who clearly has the requisite talent, but lacks the mental aspect.

[gargamel]

Matsi hands down was and is a better player than Waller. Waller is at best a legacy child who got all the pushes and selections that Matsis was never given. Matsi is like many great black players one who came way before their time and thrust into national service in the worst era of Zim cricket history.

Taylor, Williams and Cremer were also thrown into the side before their time. They all developed into fine cricketers. While guys like Matsi and Vusi struggled all their lives. From that lot Taibu was the best black cricketer we ever had. After that Hami, Chigs and Chakabva were decent, but rest were all hopeless.

Take that back Stuart was and is far better talent than the privileged white players you have mentioned.The black player has more to overcome the the white player. We as blacks are starting on a steep slope. Parent resistance to support a childs hope to play cricket, Schools that do not have cricket, Lack of Funds to buy the equipment , lack of access to facilities such as nets and bowling machine, lackk of coaches. So a black player in ZImbabwe is being thrown into the fires of Mount Doom from day one. You can never compare them.

[Googly]

If you don't play street/garden cricket with your friends/brothers/dad, if your parents don't like cricket or don't have the means or desire to support your cricketing aspirations, if your school doesn't offer cricket, if you have no access to equipment or coaching, then I'm not seeing how
a) you can have an interest in the first place
b) how you can possibly have the remotest chance of being any good at all.

Kids from under priveleged backgrounds have some big hurdles to overcome, but if they had all of those they wouldn't be able to hit a ball.
However there's no doubt that they have less opportunity and that would be why as a general rule, and I apologise to the notable exceptions, they're not as good. The other side of the coin is a kid who has had the opportunities, practiced long and hard, is a good player and has to watch a person who will never be as good as him get selected ahead of him.
I'm wondering if you think this is ok? The reality is that it's worse because that person has dedicated years and the other has simply wanted to but has been unable to. It hasn't cost him one second of his time.
Check out Temba Bavuma's background, hardly under-priveleged!
SA is not creating cricketers from high density schools, they're talent spotting and placing those kids in cricketing environments. Why isn't ZC doing this? They're not investing in the future. As it stands we don't have one, the years have slipped by and there's no plan in place at all.
If we don't put talented individuals into an environment where they can practice regularly and get proper coaching and competitive games we're not ever going to be competitive.

[Googly]

I don't think you can compare Stuart to BT. If he had the ability you say he would have done better. Taylor is a world class batsman. You worry a lot about white privelege but these priveleged schools have had a majority of black kids for the last 30 years. Where are the talented black kids? What's happened to all the government schools and their cricket facilities?
Name me 50 rich priveleged white families and I will name you 50 similarly rich and priveleged black ones.

[Googly]

I'm always curious why the "white" schools, which in reality are more than 60% black, have predominantly white cricket teams? Why are the black kids not that interested? I think if you listed all the franchise players and the schools they went to, it would be surprising. Quite a few from PE and Churchill, but hardly any from the private schools. Maybe these guys have the opportunity to pursue other careers and sensibly realise cricket is not a great option here.
Most of the black pro's didn't have this option so soldiered on getting paid peanuts. Most of the white pro's did have options, but chose to hang in in order to play because they did have more of a support base. I guess that is a priveleged position in a sense, and might be what's bothering you, but I'm not sure it's got much to do with colour.

[Googly]

Gargamel-
The standard of school cricket, and cricket in general, is getting worse every year. It's really depressing and we are past the point of no return. What do you think is causing this? I know the answer, but I'd like to hear what you think is the cause.

[jaybro]

I've said it before and I'll say it again poor Stuart Maksikenyeri is the most sensationalised Zimbabwe player ever ( on this forum anyways ). He's not nearly as bad as the haters make him to be and he's not early as talented as his supporters will protest. Some of the things Hhm used to say about him were ridiculous you would have swore he was talking about Andy Flower and I think this just fuelled the haters to say he was as bad as Maruma. Either way history shows Stuey played a lot of ODI cricket and averaged around 22 never peaking much higher, history also shows a lot of other Zimbabwean batsman averaged around the same and played a similar amount of games so I would say he was an average Zimbabwean batsman. Yes you can argue he was thrown in at a young age and was let down by the rebels which effected his progression. But you could also argue without being thrown in before his time when would he have been given a chance otherwise ? His first class stats weren't crazy. You could say if he was ushered into the side slowly and batted in the middle instead of opening he may have peaked and averaged 27-30 ??? But then the same can be said about BRMT thrown into the side at 18 years old with no senior players what might his average be ?? 40-45 ?? No one ever crys for Taylor .....

In summary