Dan Rowett - a short biography

FULL NAME: Daniel Jason Rowett

BORN: 7 April 1975, at Harare

MAJOR TEAMS: Mashonaland Under-24 (1993/94)

KNOWN AS: Dan Rowett

BATTING STYLE: Right Hand Bat

BOWLING STYLE: Right Arm Fast Medium

OCCUPATION: Accountancy

FIRST-CLASS DEBUT: Zimbabweans v Surrey, at The Oval, 8 September 1993

TEST DEBUT: Awaited

ODI DEBUT: Awaited

BIOGRAPHY (January 2000)

Dan Rowett, who first represented the national team as far back as 1993, is one of the players who suffer from the problem of balancing a promising career with a sport demanding an ever-increasing degree of professionalism. Training to be a chartered accountant, he is at present limited in the amount of time he can spend on cricket, and when he has qualified it may well be too late for him to fulfil the potential that was first officially recognised seven years ago.

Dan has an uncle who played high-class cricket in South Africa, in Northern Transvaal he thinks, but apparently not at first-class level. His father did not play much, which Dan thinks may have been a good thing as he was not pushed, but he has two cousins of similar age, and the three of them played a lot together. He first played organised cricket at Sharon School in Harare, where he was a member of the school team for his final three years. He opened both batting and bowling for the school, although he cannot remember any specific performances. He preferred batting in those days, until his final years at high school, when he was required to concentrate most of his energies on bowling, which he practised in the nets almost to the exclusion of batting. In his final year at Sharon he became the first boy from that school to be selected for a Harare Schools team to play in the annual primary schools festival week.

He moved on to St John's College, where he immediately became a leading member of the various age-group teams as he progressed up the school. For the Under-15 team he remembers taking all ten wickets in an innings against Churchill School, which earned him promotion to the school first team. He took numerous five-wicket hauls, including eight in an innings against Lomagundi, and also scored three fifties. He played for Mashonaland in the national Under-15 trials, and in both his sixth-form years was selected for the national Under-19 team, as captain in his final year. He was a member of the team that visited Denmark in July 1993 for the International Youth Tournament and won the competition by beating England in the final, where he remembers taking three wickets. Earlier he had enjoyed a five-wicket haul against Bermuda.

At the age of 15 he started playing club cricket, initially at Harare Sports Club, where he practised in the nets during the period when Essex bowler Don Topley was coaching in Zimbabwe. Then he moved to Old Georgians, mainly because Bill Flower was coaching the St John's team at that time and his sons Andy and Grant were at that club, and he has remained there ever since when in Zimbabwe. Bill he names as the biggest influence of his cricketing career; Bill pushed him hard at school and Dan says he was the main driving force behind getting him into the national side. On his Under-19 tours he also found help from Dave Houghton and Andy Pycroft.

He was a major surprise as a selection for the national team tour of England in 1993, while he was in his final year at school. He had been bowling well in school and club cricket, and had some good performances against the touring Western Province team to his credit. Dan was most surprised as well, and naturally found the jump from schoolboy to first-class level considerable. He feels that it may have been his tight bowling for Mashonaland against Western Province that won him a place at the last minute at the expense of the injured Mark Burmester, and that the selectors had decided to give a youngster an opportunity.

This tour was a brief one, playing matches only up to county level, with an end-of-season game at the Scarborough Festival. This match provided Dan with his main memory of the tour, as it was against a World XI containing such players as Dean Jones, Phil Simmons, Roger Harper, Mudassar Nazar and Danny Morrison. Dan was not actually in the Zimbabwean team for that match, but spent a long time in the field as substitute. Then, when one of the World XI players was injured and they had no twelfth man, he was called on to field for them for hours on end as Zimbabwe played out a draw. It was his first chance, he says, to rub shoulders with them and he learned a lot from them.

Dan did play in the two county matches that followed, against Surrey and Kent. He took his first wicket with his third ball in first-class cricket; in those days, he says, he used to bowl big inswingers, and Rehan Alikhan shouldered arms and was trapped lbw. This was to be his only first-class wicket on tour, though. He learned as much off the field, though, especially in the nets with Eddo Brandes, one of his idols, and also Dave Brain and other national players.

On his return he took his A-levels and was accepted at the University of Cape Town, where he stepped straight into their first team. He played in the Cape Town premier league and had hopes of playing for the Western Province team, but since he had already represented Zimbabwe he would only qualify as a foreign player, a position that was currently filled by Desmond Haynes. He had to settle for some B team and Under-24 representation.

Dan had hopes of playing full international matches for Zimbabwe during that first year at university, as he was bowling the best he had ever bowled. He played for Zimbabwe A against South Africa A at Alexandra Sports Club in October 1994, but he among other bowlers took a severe hammering and the team lost overwhelmingly. But the national coach at the time, John Hampshire, was impressed with him and put him in the squad to play Sri Lanka in the tour that followed. He was given reason to believe that he would play in the First Test, but was then told at the last minute that the selectors had decided to stay with the experienced players. He found that particularly disappointing as he had postponed his exams in Cape Town in order to take part, and now he had to fly back to take them.

After Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe had been invited to take part in the World Series in Australia, and Dan was told he was in the squad for that. He flew out to Australia following further exams, expecting no difficulties as the tour coincided with the university vacation. Unfortunately he suffered an injury as he snapped a muscle in the groin and stomach region and was unable to play any international matches there. Afterwards he had to return to Cape Town for the next university term, in great disappointment. It also put him out of cricket for the rest of the season, as it took longer to heal than he had hoped, and it meant that he had no chance of playing against Pakistan when they came to Zimbabwe at the end of that season.

In his four years at Cape Town he enjoyed much success in club cricket, playing an important part as player and vice-captain as the university cricket team won the local one-day competition twice and came second in the two-day competition. Besides bowling well, he hit his highest score to date in any class of cricket, 87 off about 43 balls against Cape Town Cricket Club in the one-day competition when he was promoted in the order to increase the run rate. He also played in the South African Universities Week, where his team started in the third league and in two years moved up to the first league.

He has never got so close to the Zimbabwe national side again, though, and admits to feeling rather disappointed with the organisation. The Zimbabwe Board XI played frequently in South Africa, including a match against Boland B at Paarl, not far from Cape Town. There was a number of Zimbabweans at UCT then besides himself - Dan Peacock, Jason Elliot, Jason Oates, Rob Gifford and the Murphys - and they felt they had been forgotten by the Zimbabwean authorities. They tried to contact the side, even if it was to bowl in the nets, but they were ignored, and Dan feels this is a problem that still exists in Zimbabwean cricket. He returned to play in Zimbabwe during the holidays, mainly for Old Georgians with an occasional Logan Cup or Zimbabwe Board match.

After finishing university at the end of 1997, Dan decided to focus his attention on post-graduate studies as he aimed to become a chartered accountant, and found it very demanding, working during the day with a Harare firm of accountants and then studying in the evenings. He did not have much time to practise cricket, although he played club cricket and was in the squad for the Zimbabwe Board XI. He was unable to take time off for that team's tours to South Africa, though. He hopes to qualify at the end of 2000, but he has examinations in March 2000 and was unavailable for any cricket, including the reorganised Logan Cup competition, until then.

After qualifying he expects to have more time available for cricket, but also would like to travel abroad and play club cricket in England if possible. He hopes he will be able then to turn in enough good performances to become a candidate once again for a place in the national side, but thinks that it would be very difficult for him, as a player once in the squad, to return, especially as a bowler, with quite a number of young players pressing for places. Yet even as recently as early 1999 he was a member of the initial national squad for the World Cup, only to be told he was not required.

His bowling has had its highs and lows since his school days, and by the end of high school he thinks he was bowling as quickly as he does today. In his first year at Cape Town, when he felt he was at his best, he worked well with the coach there, Emerson Trotman, but after Trotman left his bowling declined. He has had a problem with his wrist breaking at the point of delivery, and as Zimbabwe does not at present have a bowling coach he has not found anybody able regularly to help him with problems such as this. He was unfortunately abroad when Carl Rackemann coached many of Zimbabwe's leading bowlers in November 1999, but he did see Dennis Lillee on his tour of Australia, but this was just before his injury so it was of little immediate help.

Since his days of inswingers, he has concentrated on the ball that moves away but has kept a slower ball that moves in. Old Georgians, struggling financially, are not able to employ a coach and have to concentrate on building a team, but the players work together as much as possible and Dan has found captain Gus Mackay helpful.

Dan has some strong views on cricket, and feels that it is sad to see the current situation where the national side, having enjoyed success in international cricket, seems to have lost its spark, and feels that some changes in the administration would help matters. He thinks that too much pressure is placed on too few people to get involved at too many levels: selecting, managing, coaching and so on. With a professional outfit on the field, a professional outfit is also needed off the field.

"Where we have fallen down is in our people management," he says. "ZCU tends to say one thing and do another. It has happened to others besides me. People have been told they have been selected for a side or on a tour two days before the tour party leaves, and are expected to get off work at short notice. Things like that don't help, and I think at this stage we need a larger selection panel without one person having too much say.

"There are rumours about certain players having attitude problems, purely based on their pay packages. I think we should have a separate remuneration body, where somebody separate from ZCU analyses what the weaknesses are and what should be paid, particularly for the senior players. These senior players should also have a say in it; they are not cross so much about the pay itself as that they didn't have a say in it. That is probably the saddest aspect of it, because we have a great side, especially our one-day side. We just need to gel off the field as well as on it.

"Also I don't think we play enough first-class cricket in this country. We play a lot of one-day cricket, because we don't have a big professional base. We need to try to play more three-day matches, perhaps having a weaker national league and a stronger Logan Cup. I think that would benefit particularly the younger players who have been brought up playing one-day cricket. However, the other side of the coin is that some players may not be able to get time off work. That's where we need to find sponsors prepared to pay for work days missed. They also need to try to incorporate the guys from the universities (Zimbabweans studying in South Africa) perhaps by playing the games in their vac. This would give us a bigger player base. We have a good player base in one-day cricket, but a very small one in three-day cricket."