Matabeleland chairman quits citing growing chaos

Ethan Dube, on of Zimbabwe's leading administrators, has quit as chairman of the Matabeleland Cricket Association, citing "confusion" in the structure of the game.

Dube has been at loggerheads with Peter Chingoka and the interim Zimbabwe Cricket board, and in March he was one of the senior administrators who wrote to the ICC explaining their major grievances with the way the sport was being run. That letter was effectively ignored.

"All structures have collapsed," Dube told Zimbabwe's Independent newspaper. "I do not want to be associated with that confusion. Cricket in Zimbabwe is in a sad state. The level of destruction has been alarming. We have lost our best players and our best administrators. This doesn't bode well for Zimbabwe cricket."

Dube, a former national selector, became Matabeleland's chairman last year when Ahmed Esat left for the USA. But his tenure has coincided with the collapse of the domestic game, and in March most of Matabeleland's senior clubs split from Zimbabwe Cricket and decided to form their own breakaway league.

"So many things have happened that we do not know what normal is anymore," Dube said. "Domestic cricket has collapsed. Development programmes have gone to waste. Right now there is not even a first-class competition although we keep being told that it will be played before the end of the year."

The Logan Cup, which has been played for more than a century, has not been staged this season, although a Zimbabwe Cricket spokesman insisted that this would be held when the West Indies tour was over.

"We need to sort out domestic structures," Dube insisted. "We need to get back the players we have lost if we are to have any respectability on the international stage."

Elsewhere, as revealed by Cricinfo last week, Themba Mkhosana, ZC's general manager, has also quit only a few months after returning from England where ZC had paid for him to study for a sports management degree.

It is thought the ZC interim board initially refused to accept Mkhosana's resignation, although ZC declined to comment when asked.