Doug Marrilier on the Midlands - Mashonaland match

Doug Marillier, a Zimbabwe A player and a member of the Zimbabwe Cricket Academy last year, is currently based in Kwekwe where he coaches and plays. Here he talks to John Ward about the recent match between Midlands and Mashonaland, which he missed with a broken finger, and Midlands cricket in general.

Unfortunately it wasn't a fantastic pitch at Harare Sports Club, and the Mashonaland bowling attack is a lot better and a lot more experienced than the Midlands bowling attack. We won the toss and did the right thing by fielding. The Mashonaland side is a good side and we got them out for 165, which we thought was pretty good for our bowling attack.

Unfortunately though our batsmen didn't show, I think, enough commitment. A couple did - Ken Connelly showed a fair amount of commitment, but everyone else tried to get themselves out of a tough position by playing big shots. I think that's something you learn by experience; the Midlands haven't played a lot of first-class cricket, and a lot of guys haven't played any first-class cricket before. The most experienced guys in the Midlands side apart from the pros have played a maximum of four first-class games, so we haven't a wealth of experience.

Being our first year, there are a lot of good things that have come out of it. I know we haven't done particularly well but we beat Matabeleland in one game, and it was great for us to come into a competition like this from playing league cricket to playing a much higher standard of cricket although the Logan Cup isn't at its strongest, with most of the national cricketers being away. But it's very encouraging to see that we've done as well as we have. We lost three games and won one, but to go through a season, our first in first-class cricket, and not lose all of them, we've done pretty well, and the guys have shown a lot of commitment.

Raymond Price, David Mutendera and myself are all down in Kwekwe to try and broaden the base of cricket. Obviously we want to get cricket restarted in places where it used to be played, like Chaplin and Guinea Fowl High Schools, because obviously later on that's where our young cricketers are going to come from. We want to try and get cricket 'amongst the millions', as they say. So we're doing an awful lot of coaching. We coach on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from about two in the afternoon until about eight at night, and on Tuesdays and Thursdays we coach from two until five in the afternoon, different schools and different age groups. The standard of cricket in the Midlands has improved an awful lot, I would say, since we got there three months ago.

Hopefully next year we are trying to get some of our youngsters into the CFX Academy. We have two of them in this year, Travis Friend and Gregg Haakonsen, who are both from the Midlands, although Travis went to school in Harare and Gregg was down south. They will come back to the Midlands after this year at the Academy, and they're both Midlands boys so the community will really accept them. What we'll try and do is bring on two young players, Justin Lewis and Luther Mutyambizi, so they will go to the Academy next year. That way we'll always get Midlands players coming back to the Midlands instead of having Harare guys sent out there.

Our Midlands captain is Colin Sanders, and he and Ken Connelly are probably the most dedicated people I've met in my life. Although Colin isn't the most experienced player he did a fantastic job. I know we lost three matches, but in the one game we did win his captaincy was an inspiration. And he's still learning - who knows, in two or three years he may be the best captain in the country.

Guy Savory also did very very well, but he seems to have a problem in the thirties. He got to 30 several times and then got out. He's going overseas to play as a pro this year for Kenilworth in the Birmingham league, where I had a contract.

The Kwekwe ground has improved a lot. It used to be what they call in England a village ground, because obviously Kwekwe isn't a fantastically popular place. But I believe that Kwekwe Sports Club has one of the best wickets in the country in terms of batting, anyway. It's a fantastic place to be able to play cricket. The field is coming on a lot, the community is showing a lot of dedication to making Kwekwe Sports Club a much better place. They've drawn up plans to make it into a really big, impressive ground, with seating and good facilities. It's looking really good. We have the centre of excellence at Kwekwe Sports Club, and kids come from all over the place and we coach them there, pretty much like the centre of excellence they have at the CFX Academy. At the moment we're staying in lodgings, but we'll move into a house at the ground when we go back for the third term. They're building a house and an office at the ground, and the intention is that next season basically the professionals will be running Midlands cricket, taking the load of those who have to hold down jobs.