Dave Ellman-Brown on the coming season in Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe Cricket Union chief executive speaks to John Ward about cricket in Zimbabwe in 2000/01.

JW: First of all, Dave, please could you outline the on-field programme for Zimbabwe in the near future.

DE-B: As you know, we are going to India, where we will play two Test matches and five one-dayers. We go straight on to New Zealand where we will have a Boxing Day Test match, which is now traditional in New Zealand, together with three one-dayers, before we go to Australia to play in the Carlton and United with Australia and West Indies. That will take us through to the middle of February.

We are then looking to accommodate Kenya somewhere along the line in the first quarter of 2001 in order to assist them to developing eventually to Test status. We believe it's our responsibility to give them whatever support we can, and in this regard I have suggested they should come and see us, to play our A side. It would be good cricket for our A side, and also it will assist them in developing their game. We will fit it in with our domestic programme in the first quarter.

We have almost agreed that Bangladesh will come here, and I think that will be in April. It hasn't been finally agreed between the Boards, but it has been tentatively suggested that they should come here, and we will have a reciprocal tour to Bangladesh in 2001 before we go to Sri Lanka in December. We have asked Sri Lanka to work out a programme, working backwards, so we will go from Bangladesh straight to Sri Lanka.

So we have Bangladesh pencilled in, and then we have the triangular tournament which we have arranged in principle, although we have not arrived at a final itinerary yet, whereby West Indies and India will visit Zimbabwe in our winter of 2001, and that I anticipate will be in June, July and August. India will come here first and play two or three Test matches before going into a triangular with West Indies, and then West Indies will play two or three Test matches.

We then go into the itineraries as laid down by the ICC. After four years we have come to an agreement whereby tours between all countries will be fixed from 2001 to 2011. It's on a five-year cycle, so the second five years will replicated the first. In that period we will play every country twice at home and twice away, so in ten years we will have played each Test-playing country four times. I think it's an excellent arrangement which has been a long time in coming. All but West Indies have agreed on the principle, but I believe they too will fall in line.

So that's the programme to the end of 2001; we had a busy programme last year and we have another busy programme this year. This year we will be playing something like 13 Test matches and 31 one-dayers, which funnily enough is an average for all Test-playing countries, what is expected of them in the modern day and age. We have a lot of good cricket ahead of us, including the experiment of having the first tour ever to this country during our winter period, and it will be very interesting to see how that works out. I think it's going to be a great success.

JW: And what off-field developments are taking place?

DE-B: Progress is being made on upgrading Queens Ground in Bulawayo. We are putting together a very nice media centre, and I'm sure that you as a member of the press are very impressed with the media facilities. We have also put up player facilities which I believe are outstanding, and VIP facilities. So Bulawayo is looking very good. There is more money to be spent in Bulawayo, but at the moment we are concentrating on developing Harare Sports Club because it is a requirement for the World Cup in 2003, where we will get, I believe, five or six of our games in Zimbabwe. That has been announced, and the only drawback would be if Zimbabwe and South Africa found themselves in the same division, and South Africa have said that that game must be played in South Africa. So we are hoping it can be organized in the draw so that the two countries are not in the same section.

In that case there would be six games here and I think that is very encouraging. In all probability it will be three in Bulawayo and three in Harare, but we haven't come to that decision yet. We are in the process of developing the grounds for 2003, and there are certain minimal requirements that South Africa demand for those grounds. We are in the process of developing Harare Sports Club: we put up some large stands last year and the Tobacco Industries stand is progressing. We are still awaiting permission from the authorities to go up to two storeys, and the stand will go up another floor to give them 18 boxes; they have nine at the moment.

We at the Zimbabwe Cricket Union will put together a player/VIP area identical to the Bulawayo one; the plans will be the same, with slight modifications where we perceive it will benefit. We have finalized the tenders and are just awaiting approval so we can start developing right away. The media centre we will probably leave for the time being; we won't put up a structure like we have in Bulawayo but will utilize the existing media centre, although by the time the World Cup comes we may well have improved it. But that is not a priority at the moment. We also want to upgrade the scoreboard and move it back, as it gets in the way at present.

We have other development round the country, too, not just at Test venues, but we are looking to upgrade Kwekwe, which is a very nice little ground, for secondary matches, and of course all the provinces need to be funded for development purposes. Centres of excellence have been put in at Kwekwe and Mutare, and we're looking at the Lowveld. We want to upgrade the Bulawayo centre of excellence, and these are funded by Nissan, who have done a great job for us and we appreciate all the support we have from them. But of course we also have high-density development we're looking at: we have Mabvuku, which is going at pace, and Highfields; we are looking to have similar developments in Mutare and Bulawayo.

It is all very costly and it's imperative that we have tours coming to this country to earn us money from the sale of television rights, and of course the Indian tour next year is critical to our whole development of cricket.

We are looking at a reorganization of the Union; we have set up a `think-tank' to look at changing the structure. It has done us well for a long time, but we're now professional and a Test-playing country, and it needs a revamp. We are in the throes of looking at that revamp. We have sufficient funding to carry out the activities we require up to April next year, and we look forward hopefully to some meaningful television rights for our winter series here.

We had our second Board meeting last Saturday and I think that went off well. Obviously with the think-tank situation there is a lot of work to be done and I think also the fact that we now have a full-time management team for the players, for a year anyway, is important. We have as our fulltime coach Carl Rackemann who is contracted to us until August next year. He has been with us frequently as bowling coach, so he knows the players and I think he's going to add a lot of value to the team.

It's nice to have a regular coach again; after Dave Houghton resigned we had Andy Pycroft looking after the team and now we have Carl. Carl of course was with the team for the West Indies tour and for the one-dayers in England; we had Jeff Thomson looking after them during the Test matches, which was an interim measure. But he and Andy Pycroft did a good job of work. Carl is now on his own and we think he will do an outstanding job; we are very happy with that appointment.

We have also appointed Malcolm Jarvis on a fulltime basis as our trainer-cum-computer analyst. I think he will add a lot of value; he knows the players, he's a former player and manager himself, and I think he will add to the fitness of the team, and he has the computer skills to operate the analysis machine which is becoming all-important these days.

We have now arranged for Babu Meman to be the manager for the tours to India, New Zealand and Australia, and we'll review the situation next year; we'll see how he's enjoyed it and how effective that position is. It makes my life a lot easier now we have those positions filled, so I'm very pleased about that.

We have Trevor Penney returning as coach again for the A side, and Kish Gokal will be the manager for those matches. Dave Houghton is being employed by the Academy as a coach; I'm delighted he's been able to make himself available, as there's a lot of value in Dave Houghton and I believe the Academy will benefit immensely from his expertise.

We continue to develop our secretariat and we have employed more people to cope with the amount of work that is necessary as we play more cricket and become more involved in the world cricket scene: Dawson Musekwa is looking after facilities, Fiona Butchart is the administrative clerk, and once we look into the think-tank proposals we'll be looking at other full-time administrators.

JW: Since last season we have obviously lost Neil Johnson and Murray Goodwin; I gather one or two other players are also unavailable at the moment.

DE-B: Andy Whittall is concentrating on marketing; he has decided he would rather do that than to be a contracted player. He let us know that a long time ago. We offered Dan Peacock a contract but he decided he would prefer to go to England; whether permanently or not I don't know.

Johnson is now playing for Western Province and Goodwin for Western Australia. They indicated to us that they wouldn't be playing for us this year, and I don't think it's the end of the world. Murray Goodwin is a major loss and the door is always open for him to come back. If he decides he wants a contract, he left on the understanding that if he would like to reconsider a contract we would be interested in making him an offer. It's as simple as that.

He's a loss, but isn't it amazing how some of the youngsters have started to come through and put together some very pleasing performances? Viljoen the other day was very good; Carlisle is starting to make runs; Campbell, thank goodness, has come back into form; Marillier I thought played extremely well against New Zealand; Travis Friend seems to have bowled well the other day in Sharjah. There are opportunities for these youngsters to come through, and I think that with what the Academy are producing the future is certainly not bleak.

JW: Are you able to comment on the current situation between the players and the administrators?

DE-B: Yes; we had a rocky ride last season and we had our problems in England. We set up an independent remuneration committee who laid down what they perceived to be a fair reward for the players and we abided by that. We saw fit to publish that because there has been an awful lot of speculation about what we pay them and what we don't pay them. I think the relationship between the players and the administration is getting better; I think there's a lot more work to be done but it is certainly a lot happier than it has been in the past. Let's hope it continues like that because it doesn't do anybody any good having an unhappy relationship and I hope it gets to the stage where we can have respect on both sides and continue to develop the game.