Zimbabwe have nothing to lose

If the different teams taking part in the Champions Trophy were perfectly honest with themselves, they would come up with extremely different answers to the question, "What do we hope to achieve in this tournament?"

Australia could possibly lower their bar, hope to reach the final, and take it from there, trying to get their hands on the only piece of silverware currently not found on the shelves in the Jolimont Road offices of Cricket Australia in Melbourne. India can look to get their combination right, shake off their middle-order blues, and the rest will fall into place. Pakistan, well, they'd probably reply with a question or seven.

Sri Lanka, South Africa, even New Zealand, will want to push themselves hard, looking to see how far they can get, and once within striking distance perhaps make a push for the peak. England will just be happy if they sort out who their best one-day cricketers are. Bangladesh's aim will be to qualify - but even that is a bit farfetched.

But perhaps, for more than anyone else, it is for Zimbabwe that this Champions Trophy is a big event. Yes, it's a money-spinner. Yes, it's too close to the World Cup to hold much real value. But for a team whose average age is 20, who don't play Test cricket, who play as many matches with Associate Nations as full-Test-playing nations, this tournament is a great opportunity.

To understand just how badly Zimbabwe are struck by the loss of its big players, take their latest case - Vusimuzi Sibanda. He went to Australia to play club cricket, and gain some experience, something Stuart Matsikenyeri and Douglas Hondo had done earlier and benefitted a great deal from. And now, ironically, he has not been able to secure a release from his club, and cannot be part of the Zimbabwean Champions Trophy squad.

Take the captain, Prosper Utseya. Still short of his 22nd birthday, he's only picked up 33 wickets and scored 227 runs in his ODI career. That's well short of something you'd want from someone leading a team in international cricket. But before you sneeze at it, some perspective. In a team full of bowlers who tend to be all over the shop, Utseya is the one steadying influence. Despite his team usually being at the end of a fearful hammering, his economy rate is 3.93, a staggering figure for a spinner in ODIs. It's the maturity with which he has approached his cricket that has allowed him to find a role for himself in international cricket.

And it was not something he could grow into. Fast-tracked repeatedly, his story is an interesting one. At 15 he made his first-class debut for Mashonaland A. At 17 he made his ODI debut, against Sri Lanka in Bulawayo. At 20, made captain of Zimbabwe, he led his team not just to a one-day match win, but a series win against Bangladesh. He's 47 games old in all, and a mere 8 as captain, and it showed.

In this day and age of captains glibly belting out answers to questions at press conferences, Utseya was anything but in his pre-match encounter. Sitting beside Kevin Curran, the coach, Utseya, was more than happy to play second fiddle, answering as briefly as possible, fidgeting with the microphone. "It's special playing in India, it's exciting for us," is about all he said.

Curran, though, was not as shy, and stressed that his team's aim was to be competitive and that his side needed to score 250-260 in order to be able to do so. What he didn't say, was how he thought this was going to happen against teams like Sri Lanka and West Indies. He did, however, suggest that things were looking up, as Zimbabwe had won 8 of their last 20 matches, which is almost accurate. They've won 7 of the last 20, with one no result. What he did not say was that two of those wins came against Bermuda, one each against Canada and Kenya, and three against Bangladesh. Against the big boys of international cricket, it's not going to be so easy.