A track record of failure

The announcement of an interim executive to run the affairs of Zimbabwe Cricket for the next six months by the Sports and Recreation Commission came as no surprise after all, and now the anti-Peter Chingoka faction must take the full blame.

How could they leave it to the SRC to make such a decision when the records show that the SRC, set up under an act of parliament have actually watched as sports die in Zimbabwe.

Soccer, despite being the most followed sport in the country, is in a mess due to poor administration. Bungling by the Zimbabwe Football Association has resulted in scenes of national team players staging sit-ins in the team bus before the team departs for duty, demanding their bonuses. Recently, the Zimbabwe senior national team, popularly known as the Warriors, staged a sit-in at the Harare International Airport before they left for Egypt to take part in the Africa Cup of Nations and only called off the strike when they were paid their monies.

The SRC has watched as one of Zimbabwe oldest and popular soccer sides Dynamos is being torn apart by boardroom squabbles. Dynamos are the only Zimbabwean side to reach the finals of the African Champions League, a feat they achieved in 1998, but boardroom squabbles have seen the club run by an interim executive for nearly five years and the SRC have down nothing to resolve the crisis despite the fact that they are the supreme sports governing body and the issue has been referred to them.

Rugby has died a natural death. The facilities are there but most of the players, who were mainly white farmers, have left the country to start lives somewhere else and the sponsors are no longer interested in the sport.

Hockey has also gone down the drain with two of the country's world-class pitches, Magamba in Harare and Khumalo in Bulawayo, in a mess with the artificial surfaces disintegrating. Zimbabwe has not hosted any international hockey matches since 2002 when they played against South Africa in Bulawayo. The country also failed to send a team for the Africa Cup of Nations held in South Africa last year after the Hockey Association of Zimbabwe failed to raise the necessary funds.

Tennis, a sport that rose in popularity in the late 1990s due to Zimbabwe's success in the Davis Cup, is now dead and buried. The man at the helm there is Paul Chingoka, Peter's older brother. Zimbabwe got a lot of money from the Davis Cup but little was channeled towards the development of the game. Paul Chingoka, who stepped down as president of Tennis Zimbabwe in 2003 to become Zimbabwe Olympic Committee president, was suspended from all tennis activities early in 2005 by the SRC, together with former TZ treasurer Bash Mohamed, amid allegations of misappropriation of funds. Little progress with the investigations appears to have been made since then.

With such a track record, surely the SRC could have not down anything to save cricket? The last stakeholders' meeting, held early last month, made recommendations for an interim executive, but none of those recommended were named in the interim executive announced on Friday.

The stakeholders had forwarded the names the names of David Ellman-Brown, Macsood Ebrahim, Charles Robertson and Ethan Dube to make up the interim executive. Brown, who was suppose chair the interim committee, is a life president of Zimbabwe Cricket and is one of the longest serving cricket administrator in Zimbabwe. He was the president of the Zimbabwe Cricket Union when Zimbabwe were granted Test status in 1992 before he handed over the reins to Chingoka a few months later. He then served as the chief executive officer of the ZCU, a post he stood down from in 2001. He appeared the perfect man to run the show as his track record speaks for itself, but to the government that would have been taking cricket back to the whites. SRC chairman Gibson Mashingaidze made that clear on Friday how the government feels about the whites and Asians. Robertson, Ebrahim and Dube are also respected in cricket circles but to the SRC they were not acceptable.

Leaving the fate of Zimbabwe cricket to the SRC was a huge mistake that will be regretted, and the anti-Chingoka faction must take full blame. All they should have tried was to win hearts within the board but now they will have to live with their mistakes.

Cricket had remained as the only team sport where Zimbabwe were regularly competing on the world stage. Now it is months, or even weeks away, from joining the rest of the country's sports in isolation, and on the path to oblivion.