Walking up the down escalator

"Nothing to be done," sighs a frustrated Estragon in the opening scene of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot. "Nothing happens. Nobody comes, nobody goes. It's awful," he adds a little later on - and indeed, Estragon and Vladimir, the play's principal characters, find themselves in much the same situation at the end of the narrative as they were at the beginning: waiting.

Beckett was, of course, a keen cricketer and student of the game, and remains the only Nobel Prize winning author to have played first-class cricket. Zimbabwe's cricketers might also find something to identify with in Gogo and Didi's bleak existentialism. For every step forward they took this year, it seemed they took two back, and it's hard to identify the ways in which the team has progressed. The very superstructure of international cricket underwent seismic changes with the ascendancy of the 'Big Three', but in real terms Zimbabwe barely felt a ripple in their wake. They are as they were: waiting. Waiting to be paid on time, waiting for their schedule to normalise, waiting for stability.

Their year began on a sombre note, as a player strike over non-payment meant no cricket had been played since December 2013, and it wasn't until mid-February that the domestic season resumed. That was hardly ideal preparation for the World T20 and Zimbabwe stumbled through their opening warm-up match against Hong Kong at the tournament, in which 19-year-old Mark Chapman slammed a 33-ball 53 to thoroughly embarrass them.

A last-ball defeat to Ireland and a last-ball victory over Netherlands showed that Zimbabwe were very much among equals in the qualifying round. Indeed, 2014 showed that there's little to distinguish between the bottom rung of the Full Members and the top Associates when Zimbabwe are low on morale and inspiration - as they were when they reached the dark nadir of becoming, officially, the worst Test team in the game, ranked 10th (for the first time since Bangladesh became a Full Member). Conversely, when imbued with vim and vigour they also gave glimpses of the team they could - and should - be.

And so it was that the same team that could push South Africa, arguably the best Test side on the planet for four days in a one-off Test, and fight back to beat Australia in an ODI for the first time in 31 years could also let go of a 2-0 lead to draw a series against Afghanistan (games that were, incidentally, Zimbabwe's first ODIs for more than 10 months), lose a T20 to Hong Kong, and limply surrender to an 8-0 series whitewash against Bangladesh to end the year.

Zimbabwe's cricketing schizophrenia isn't all that surprising. Fifteen players were offered full-time central contracts in July this year, and though many of them have second jobs, they are professionals. Not that they're really treated as such. When Andy Waller was "promoted" out of his position as national coach with a year left on his contract in July, Steve Mangongo became Zimbabwe's first black African coach, which, whatever the circumstances, is something of a milestone. Mangongo appeared determined to lift Zimbabwe to new heights through sheer force of will, but it's questionable whether marathon, expletive-ridden training sessions and a schoolmasterly, authoritarian manner made for the best way of doing this. Mangongo's repeated assertions that Zimbabwe weren't playing high school or boozer's league cricket belied the fact that Zimbabwe's cricketers were treated like schoolboys. Case in point: the farcically bizarre censure of Tinashe Panyangara for sharing a video of Mitchell Johnson bowling bouncers at English batsmen.

In a professional set-up it would have been brushed off for what it was: banter among team-mates that was more likely to build camaraderie - gallows humour and all - than anything else. Luke Jongwe narrowly escaped a similar suspension, and in October it was decided that Sean Williams - probably Zimbabwe's best player of spin, and certainly their finest exponent of the reverse sweep - would not join the team on their tour of Bangladesh. He might not have changed the result of that series, but Zimbabwe don't have the depth to leave out a player of Williams' quality over miscommunication and a couple of missed training sessions. Within two weeks of Zimbabwe's return from Bangladesh, Mangongo was out of a job, having been "redeployed" to the Under-19 side.

The last bit of cricket news in the year was that Utseya, their hat-trick taking, history-making offspinner was cleared to bowl again again. Cleared to bowl, that is, with the somewhat limiting clause that he could not bowl offspin, just slow medium pace. You couldn't make this stuff up.

Away from the team, the absurd theatre of Zimbabwe Cricket's off-field shenanigans galloped on this year. In March, it was revealed that the ZC leadership had allegedly mismanaged a US$6m loan from the ICC to enrich a bank on whose board they sit, and ignored a key condition of the loan. At the time, ZC's debt had ballooned to $18m. The following month ZC turned down a loan from the ICC, with the leadership deciding the suggestion of an ICC-backed and appointed administrator was one of too many strings attached. But in July, Peter Chingoka stepped down as chairman after 22 years at the helm, with Wilson Manase (who is also, incidentally, chairman of the Metbank board), taking on his role.

In October, Chingoka was named an honorary life president of ZC, while Ozias Bvute - who ostensibly left ZC two years ago - still turns up to meetings as an "advisor". At the end of November he reportedly attended a caucus between ZC and the Zimbabwe Professional Cricketers' Association, where in the midst of a 30-minute tirade, Bvute was reported to have said, among other things, that Zvimba [Eliah Zvimba, ZPCA rep] was "full of crap and making unrealistic demands", and that Zimbabwe's cricketers were an "uneducated" bunch who did not deserve money because ZC was no longer a "sellable brand".

Nothing's really changed. Nobody comes, nobody goes. And the awful effects of ZC's debt problems are unlikely to go away any time soon, with Manase saying that he hoped ZC would be in the black in 2019 - and that's assuming that Zimbabwean cricket will somehow start to turn over a net profit of several million dollars a year. In the meantime ZC has had its outside broadcast van, and a number of company cars seized over outstanding debts relating to a long-running labour dispute.

High point
Zimbabwe's historic win over Australia in Harare. It wasn't just that Zimbabwe won the match; how they won elevated its emotional impact. Followers of Zimbabwean cricket are familiar with the pattern: plucky start, bit of a wobble, middle-order collapse, then kerplunk. This match appeared to be following that script, but then Zimbabwe clawed their way back from a tricky position, and five-foot-nothing Utseya, usually little more than an anonymous nurdler with the bat, shellacked Mitchell Starc over midwicket to win the game. It was simply magical.

Low point
Zimbabwe's defeats to Afghanistan weren't much fun, but the national side was undoubtedly rusty, and the series still contained several notable performances from them, such as Sikandar Raza's maiden ODI ton.

It's hard to recall a Zimbabwean side more thoroughly demoralised than the one that took the field for the final ODI against Bangladesh at the tail end of Zimbabwe's longest away tour in years, a six-week affair in October-November. Left-arm spinner Taijul Islam prolonged Zimbabwe's misery, snapping up a hat-trick on debut as the visitors were bowled out for a wretched 128, having lost their last nine wickets for just 33 runs. Bangladesh cantered home with 25 overs to spare, and Zimbabwe's humiliation was complete.

New kid on the block
Solomon Mire may well be the allrounder Zimbabwe have been looking for. His reputation as a big hitter preceded his international debut by several years, but it's his performances in Australian cricket that finally led him to the international arena. He made community paper headlines back in July when he slammed a 157-ball 260, including 21 sixes, for Waratahs to set a new tournament record in the Darwin and District Cricket Competition. His exploits for Essendon in the Victoria Cricket Association Premiership had also led to a game for Victoria Under-23s, and then a handful of games for Melbourne Renegades in the Big Bash League in 2013-14 as a community rookie. Batting seems his stronger suit, and Zimbabwe will have been pleased by his pair of fifties in unfamiliar conditions in his debut series in Bangladesh.

Fading star
There's no Zimbabwean batsman who can match the crisp minimalism of Vusi Sibanda's rapier-like shot play when he's confident and on form. Unfortunately, both form and confidence seemed to abandon him in 2014. Sibanda played two Tests, eight ODIs and three T20Is this year, but couldn't reach 50 in any of them, scraping together 212 runs at 15.14 across all formats. Given his experience of Australian conditions (Sibanda has had a couple of stints in Sydney grade cricket, as well as touring with the national side in 2003-04) he ought to feature in Zimbabwe's World Cup plans, but he'll need to score plenty of runs in the interim to assuage the doubts of the team's trigger-happy selectors.

What 2015 holds
Though they haven't a snowball's chance of winning it, every Zimbabwean will be looking forward to the World Cup. The tournament will also offer everyone the chance to showcase their talents on a global stage, potentially with an eye on securing potential overseas domestic contracts. With ZC having suggested that financial stability will not return for the next four years, it's possible that some of the players may leave the international game behind after this tournament.

They'll also have a new coach. They have, as yet, no Tests to look forward to in 2015, though Pakistan will apparently be visiting after the World Cup, and no doubt the year will also feature some sort of series against Bangladesh. It says a lot about the state of Zimbabwean cricket that their condition is so analogous to the worldview of a mercilessly gloomy Irish playwright, and Beckett's words - this time from Worstward Ho - do a fine job of encapsulating the timbre of Zimbabwe's 2015: "Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better."