The A to Z of international cricket was on show today when Afghanistan met Zimbabwe in a warm-up match at Lincoln, ahead of the ICC U19 Cricket World Cup starting later in the week.
Afghanistan captain Noor-ul-Haq Malekzai said his team was looking forward to the tournament after a good qualifying series.
“We will see – we are not a weak team,” he said. “In Canada we beat many of those teams that have been playing cricket for 50 years, such as the USA and Canada. So we believe in our team.”
His counterpart in the Zimbabwe side, Dylon Higgins believes his team could be a dark horse at the U19 CWC.
“Cricket’s a good game – anything can happen. I think we might be a surprise in this tournament. We’re underdogs, but we’re here to shock a couple of teams.”
There are also stark contrasts between the two cricketing nations, of course. Afghanistan is one of the newest cricket playing nations in the world, with the game only becoming established in the 1990s. Afghanistan became an affiliate ICC member in 2001.
The senior side has made huge progress in recent years, winning the Pepsi ICC World Cricket League Division 3, 4 and 5 competitions in 2008 and 2009, and becoming the first affiliate to earn ODI status.
Noor-ul-Haq said the challenges facing his country’s cricketers are immense. “We don’t have many grounds, we don’t have first class cricket, we don’t have any bowling machines so we have limited facilities – it is only because our boys have worked hard that we qualified for the World Cup.”
Zimbabwe, on the other hand, traces its cricketing roots back 100 years earlier, with the start of the game in Rhodesia in the 1890s. It became an ICC associate member in 1980 and a full member in 1992.
While the senior game has struggled in recent years, Zimbabwe has enjoyed periods of great success as an international team, producing world-class players like Andy Flower and Heath Streak.
For Higgins one of the key goals in his side’s participation at the U19 CWC in 2010 is to help Zimbabwe rebuild its international standing as a cricketing power.
“For our country – we need Test status back and obviously this will help. The better we do in this competition the more chance there will be of regaining Test status. I think our national side will be looking for players to step up straight from here into the national side.”
For the record, Z overcame A in their warm-up clash – with Zimbabwe chasing down Afghanistan’s 175 with four wickets in hand.