Dave Houghton: the influence continues

Dave Houghton talks to John Ward about his new job as coach at the CFX Academy and looks back on his years as Zimbabwe team coach.

Which individual has had the greatest influence on Zimbabwe cricket since it began just over 100 years ago? Names such as David Lewis, Colin Bland, John Traicos and Andy Flower spring to mind, and Mike Procter certainly transformed the country's cricket, but he was only here for six years. Considering that the opportunity for influence has increased so much in recent years, perhaps the most prominent name, when a definitive history of the country's cricket comes to be written, will be that of Dave Houghton.

Ever since he made his first appearance as a rather tubby wicket-keeper/batsman in 1977, Dave Houghton has made a steadily increasing impact on cricket in this country, and his role has by no means diminished since he retired twenty years later. He took a long time to start fulfilling his potential, taking nearly eight years to record a first-class century, but he went on to record a total of 17, well ahead of the next best, Mike Procter's 11. This has recently been overtaken by Andy Flower, but Dave's more than 7000 first-class runs remains a Zimbabwean record, although that too will soon be overtaken by the Flower brothers who have had more opportunities.

In his younger days Dave was well known for a rather wild, undisciplined lifestyle, but he lacked a real mentor and was forced to work most things out for himself. When he did so, he slimmed down, applied himself to his career, learnt how to build big innings and soon established himself as the country's leading batsman. He had several spells as captain, but was not the best of communicators, although an outstanding tactician whose ability to read a game has benefited Zimbabwean teams immeasurably both before and after his retirement.

He had to wait until 35 before making his Test debut, when Zimbabwe were finally admitted to Test status after serving a much longer and harder apprenticeship than Bangladesh had to endure. They, and he, both showed they were more than ready for it, as Zimbabwe had the better of India in a drawn inaugural Test and Dave himself hit a superb 121, the first batsman to hit a century in his country's first Test match since Charles Bannerman in 1877. He went on to average 43 in his 22 Test matches over the next five years before retiring at the age of 40, when he still seemed to be at the peak of his powers but confessed to finding it more difficult to maintain concentration at the crease. He scored a monumental 266 against Sri Lanka at Queens Sports Club in Bulawayo in 1994/95, still a national Test record and the highest individual score by a Zimbabwean on home soil.

Had Zimbabwe been granted Test status soon after the 1983 World Cup, which would have been appropriate, Dave's worldwide reputation as a player might well have been greater, and Zimbabwe would have been a greater force with Dave and Graeme Hick batting together for them; Hick would surely have found more success had he played for Zimbabwe instead of England. As it was, he played in the odd few exhibition matches for World elevens, but the mainstream of the cricketing world knew little of his real ability. He never had the opportunity to play Test cricket in England or Australia, but on the other hand he did at least enjoy more fruits for his years of service than other such fine players of genuine world class as Andy Pycroft and Peter Rawson.

NATIONAL TEAM COACH

On his retirement Dave was immediately wanted by the Zimbabwe Cricket Union, who recognized his astute cricket brain and ability, as national team coach. Dave had been for a while combining the duties of both player and coach for the Zimbabwean team, and was already a successful coach of the English county Worcestershire, who were reluctant to lose him, but in the end he decided to stay home and devote his talents to his own country. He made an auspicious start in this new job, with many of Zimbabwe's young players paying tribute to him as an outstanding coach and mentor who helped them develop their games technically and mentally. Unfortunately it was to end in a degree of disillusionment, as Dave resigned a few months before his three-year contract was due to expire, after a torrid time with unco-operative players in the West Indies.

Fortunately Dave's talents are not to be lost to Zimbabwean cricket; in fact, he now has the chance to guide the future course of the game more significantly than ever before. He has taken over the main coaching duties at the CFX Academy, guiding the country's most promising young players of between about 18 and 23, and is currently negotiating a three-year contract with the ZCU to continue in this role, and also to direct the course of first-class cricket and coaching in the country, especially in the provinces.

THE HIGHLIGHTS

Looking back at the highlights of his almost three years as national coach, Dave sees the 1998/99 season as the best of all. "That was the season we beat India in a Test match here in Harare," he says, "and then went on to Pakistan and won that Test match there, and ultimately the series. That was probably the best little run of play we had, as we also did well in Sharjah, beating Sri Lanka twice and India once and got to the final. We lost 2-1 in the one-days to Pakistan as well, but in a period of six months our cricket was quite brilliant. And then of course getting into the Super Six at the last World Cup was a nice achievement; I don't think we played our best cricket there, but it was nice to get through to the top six."

After the early stages of the World Cup, when Zimbabwe beat India, thanks to that magical last over by Henry Olonga, and then South Africa, Zimbabwe suffered their most wretched run of results. Players lost form and spirit, and there were some humiliating defeats. Zimbabwe often simply failed to be competitive, which had rarely been the case before then. What went wrong?

WHAT WENT WRONG?

"Straight away we took on two of the top sides in the world in Australia and South Africa," Dave says. "We got some good hidings from them both. Winning becomes a habit, and it's also a confidence thing, and to start the season off with a couple of big hidings and try and recover from that is quite difficult. I think also the players themselves, having done well at the World Cup and with a good season prior to that, got a little bit bigger than their stations. We didn't have the same self-discipline within the teams that had actually created the victories we'd had a year beforehand. I think guys got themselves into over-confident mode, and that led to our downfall. Our batters didn't perform in the way the way they should, and you can't win games without scoring lots of runs.

"There were a lot of outside influences that weren't helping matters. We had this constant dispute between the players and the Union over pay packets, and that didn't help. But I always said to the guys in the changing room that that should be an incentive for them to do better, because it's a lot better to argue your point from on winning position than it is when you're getting beaten every day. It wasn't a pleasant time, but it shouldn't really have affected what happened on the field.

"We had games to win along the way too that we didn't put to bed: we should have beaten West Indies in the First Test in Trinidad. We're not the first side that's failed like that in the last innings in Trinidad itself, but again, because winning becomes a bit of a habit and a confidence thing, victory there might have made a complete difference to the tour. Instead of our losing everything, we could well have gone on to win everything.

"Then, as we showed in England when they guys got a bit of confidence and beat a couple of county sides, we played well in the Second Test, and suddenly their cricket was completely different by the end of the tour."

NEW TACTICS

Dave started his full-time job as coach after the New Zealand tour of September 1997, and immediately struck the right note with his team, with his innovative coaching methods and concentration on individual skills. "I didn't really bring in a whole lot of different things," he says. "We did do a lot more work on tactics, in one-day cricket in particular, and I got a bit of help from outside as well. Obviously I like to talk the game with as many people as I can, and with the correlation of a lot of information from other people we put together different tactics for one-day cricket. That helped us a lot, and we went from winning perhaps 25% of all our games to about an eighteen-month period when we won 60 to 70%. So it made a big difference.

"In terms of actual practice we tried to be a little bit more specific, to practise specific areas of the game, such as batting in the 15- to 40-over period, in the first 15 period, in the last 10, and revolve a whole practice around specific areas of the game. Of course that also involves bowling in those periods too. Each area has a different objective.

"When it came round to the Test cricket side of things, I've never really changed my ideas of practice for Test cricket. There's no substitute for hard work. You've got to run up and bowl line and length in practice, just like you have to do in a match. As a batsman you have to be a little bit more disciplined. So we tried to make out practices as close to Test-match conditions as possible."

WHY IT DIDN'T WORK

Individual coaching was also a vital part of Dave's regime. "Being a fulltime national coach we have all day to work, and what we did for a long period of time was just to work in hour batches - getting two batsmen in for one hour and work with them with the bowling machine or with specific bowlers if they wanted to face just spin or just genuine seam for a while. But as with all good things we bring into Zimbabwe cricket, the players themselves get bored very quickly, especially with the good things. So that had a limited lifespan. After that they didn't want to do it any more, so I had to find something else to keep them occupied, to keep their concentration up.

"It's quite amazing to me how young cricketers, whether it's the national side or with the Academy or schoolboy cricket, all the good things you bring into practice, they're quite quick to throw away, but they hang on to bad habits for ever. That again is something we've brought across to the Academy, and I try hard every day with these Academy kids to make them understand they have to remember all the good things - and the good things take hard work and extra effort. The more they can put that into their game, the more chance they have of succeeding."

Dave also finds that, despite the number of good cricketing schools in the country, he has to do a great deal of work on the basics with the Academy players. "They've just been performing on ability alone," he says, and tells of their need to spend hours in the nets, just practising one particular stroke after another. Basic coaching in the country is clearly not as good or as widespread as many Zimbabweans like to think.

With his concentration on the individual, Dave often found he had insufficient time to give the quality coaching needed to the national players. Also, being primarily a batsman, he did not always feel he had the necessary skills to give young bowlers all the help they needed, and he says, "During the last seven months, when we had Carl Rackemann attached to us, I can't remember how I managed to run the squad for two years without an assistant. It's almost impossible for one person to try to look after a squad of about 15 people. You're trying to cover the fielding, the keeping, the bowling, the batting, and you haven't got enough time to cover everything.

"I can look back at it now and say, `We didn't give the tail-enders enough batting time.' That's one area that cost us a lot, because you win matches - or we used to, in the old days in particular, but even now around the world - sides win matches with seven, eight, nine, ten and eleven batting well. That's one area where I didn't have enough time to give those guys enough batting time. I didn't have enough time to work hard with the fast bowlers. I specialized mainly on the batting side.

"And the fielding practices: trying to run a squad of 15 on your own, people are not getting enough catches, balls on the ground and balls to throw because you've only got one station. As soon as you had the assistant coach there, you're splitting the squad up, you've got two stations and you can double the amount of balls to field and catch. It makes such a difference.

"And then of course running nets: I can stand and concentrate on the batters and Carl Rackemann could stand there and concentrate on the bowlers. Then the two of us could meet afterwards and decide how things went during the practice. So, as I say, I don't know how I managed to run it for two and a bit years on my own."

HOW TO PLAY SPIN

Dave in his playing days had a reputation of being one of the finest players of spin bowling in the world. In Zimbabwe's early years in international cricket, the two Flowers and Alistair Campbell were also fine players of spin, but the rest of the team was always at sea against quality spin. More recently the majority of other players have developed their ability in this department, and the improvement can clearly be put down to Dave's contribution as coach. How did he go about helping his batsmen to play spin?

"Obviously we introduced sweep shots - and the reverse sweep," he says. The reverse sweep was one of Dave's trademarks, and he was at one time rated by judges as being perhaps the best player of that hybrid stroke in the game. "They're very good tactical shots - but having said that, there have been a number of times when we've lost four or five wickets sweeping, and we've had to sit back and ask, `Why were we playing those shots?' It's one thing to introduce all the shots and the ways to counteract spin, but you then have to have the head to know how to use them at the right time.

"It's pointless playing a reverse sweep when there's a man standing at 45 degrees saving the single because you've a chance of getting out. It's pointless playing a little touch sweep if there's a man on the leg side at 45 degrees, because again you've got a chance of getting out. And really, the chance of getting out as opposed to the value of runs you might score from playing that shot don't weigh up. So, although you teach the shots and you teach the guys when to use the shots, you hope they have the common sense in the middle to use them only when required.

"A lot of our guys like to stay in the crease, so we had to try and work ways to get them to move down the wicket. Murray Goodwin was a good exponent of using his feet against spin, and I think just having him in the side and the other guys watching him play was a big help. The basics are very simple all the time: if it's an off-spinner you play him on the leg side most of the time, and if it's a leg-spinner you hit him on the off side most of the time. But again, it's up to each guy when he gets to the middle to read the situation and play accordingly."

ASSESSING THE PLAYERS

Which individual players have perhaps benefited the most from Dave's years as coach? Thinking about it, Dave mentions Guy Whittall and Bryan Strang, but, he says, "It's hard to take any credit for Andy Flower or Grant Flower or Alistair Campbell because they were naturally good players anyway; it was just a question of getting them to knuckle down and play well. It's been such a pity really that Alistair has had a two-year off period because as we've seen since the start of the New Zealand tour, when that guy's on fire, when he's playing properly as he's capable of playing, it makes such a difference to our batting side. I think they all had enough ability. It's just a matter of getting them to put it together as a team."

Dave has spoken very highly of Stuart Carlisle's dedication and approach recently, so I asked him about Stuey. "I think Stuey's learning all the time, but I never really had enough time with him," he replies. "He was always in and out of the side, and I think the one thing Stuey needed more than anything was a long run. He's got a run at number three now with the departure of Murray Goodwin and he's making a lot of 25s and 35s, with the odd 60 thrown in. But he's got all the attributes that should make him able to succeed at the highest level; all he's got to do now is convert starts into big scores."

Grant Flower was another besides Alistair Campbell who have gone through long dry periods recently, and Grant is still fighting to get out of his. I asked Davison if he could pinpoint any reasons behind the problems suffered by those two.

"I think with Alistair - this is my own impression of Alistair - he needs to have pressure on him all the time," thinks Dave. "He needs to be worried abut his place for him to play well. We've seen it through his career as he's had his ups and downs, his peaks and valleys. The only time he really plays well is when there's pressure behind him. I genuinely worry about Alistair when he's in really good form, because then I think he's going to go into the match and not work as hard as he would do if he felt he was slightly out of touch and there was pressure on his place. So the effect of being captain for two years didn't help because he knew he was guaranteed a place all the time, and he would play little cameos now and again, but he wasn't as consistent as he should be.

"In Grant's case I'm not too sure. Two years ago he was probably rated as one of the best opening batters in world cricket. He's just gone backwards from there, so I don't know. He's a hard trainer and huge in the gym physically, very big on watching his diet and things like that, and he works hard, so there's no real reason why he shouldn't succeed. Obviously the longer the trough went, the worse he got. I think what they did in England by putting him at number six in the one-day series and he suddenly came back into form, was a good idea. Maybe they should think about doing that in the Test matches."

My own feeling was that Grant's lack of confidence in the Tests against New Zealand was actually detrimental to the side as a whole. He opened with Gavin Rennie, with Stuart Carlisle to follow, and neither of those players were certain of their places in the team. When Grant made such heavy weather of the New Zealand bowling, I felt it affected the other two as well, and the whole of the early Zimbabwean batting became badly bogged down with none of them able to take command of the bowling.

"It's been one of the problems in Zimbabwe cricket for ages," agrees Dave. "We've never really had a pair of good opening batters. If you look back at the records going back even before my time, you won't find a pair of good opening batters like Greenidge and Haynes, or Kirsten and Hudson, or Kirsten and Gibbs. So opening batting isn't a new problem for Zimbabwe cricket. I just think Grant is too valuable, too experienced to be thrown away against the new ball when he's slightly out of touch. He's comfortable batting in the middle; we've seen that from one-day cricket, and because he has a lot of experience as an opening batter he's still able to play good tight cricket coming in in the middle order. I think maybe we should have taken the chance of moving a couple of youngsters up to open the batting - we've got Marillier involved there now as well, so we've got a choice of Marillier, Rennie and Gripper, none of whom have been overly successful as yet, but get them in there and let them face the new ball, and maybe they will succeed.

"Then we can strengthen the middle order. If I look back over the twenty years I played, the strength of our batting was four, five, six, seven. We always had problems up in the front. Yes, we used to get the odd good score, the odd century, from an opening batter or number three, but the strength of the batting was in four, five, six, seven. We need to continue in this way until we find good, solid opening batters, and the only place we're going to find that is through an Academy system and through a first-class system in this country. Now we have a first-class system in place, obviously it's not going to throw out people overnight, and it might take four or five years to develop. But that's what I'd do: I'd try to develop top-class opening batters in the first-class system, and at the moment leave Grant in the middle and stick one or two of the youngsters up in front, someone like Marillier. Give him a run and see how he goes - we've seen he's got the temperament."

Perhaps, I suggested, it was just a matter of personal pride that made Grant continue to press for opening the batting rather than readily accepting a drop in the order. "There is a fair amount of that, I'm sure," agrees Dave. "The last thing Grant wants is to be seen as somebody who's run away from the opening berth. But at the end of the day it's about the team, and you've got to do the best for the team, and I'm sure Grant would benefit from playing further down the order, and the team would benefit. The team approach in Test cricket is you want to get a score of above 350 every time you bat, and I don't mind if the century comes from the batsman at number seven or from the batsman at number one. So I would say to Grant, `That's the way to go; get some runs, boost your confidence, and then if you feel you want to open the batting again we'll talk about going up the order again.'"

GROWING OLD TOGETHER

Unfortunately, after such a good start to Dave's career as national team coach, things started to go wrong and in the end it ended with acrimony after the West Indian tour, when he resigned. Was Dave prepared to talk about this?

"It's not really a case of what went wrong between me and the players," he says. "To be quite honest, it's been my experience throughout coaching that once you've been with a side for two or three years they need some new ideas. As I said, I found it difficult to keep them occupied and active; I had to bring new ideas into nets all the time, new fielding training, because when you stay with the same thing for three or four months it gets stale. After the World Cup I should have, if I could, got out of the national coaching job and they should have got somebody else to kick them on a little further. He might say exactly the same thing, but it's a different voice coming from a different person, so people sit up and listen.

"Unfortunately I still had a year to run in my contract and I mentioned it to the ZCU at the time, that I felt that there was a need for a change of the national coach and they should get somebody new in. They didn't, and unfortunately that's where the difference of opinion came between the players and me. I was trying to bring in new things because I knew I had to get through this next year with them and it was difficult. I started off the year bringing in psychologists, nutritionists, motivators, going on cricket camps with them - anything different I could think of to try and kick them on a little further. But it didn't work, and when they failed I was starting to get a bit annoyed with them. They felt then I wasn't communicating with them and it was just a compilation. The bottom line was just that I went on a year too long."

Dave Houghton's frustration had been evident during the World Cup when the players began so well but then fell away under the pressure of expectation. Dave publicly stated then that his team had choked under pressure, presumably hoping that this would sting them into recognizing the problem and working to overcome it. Instead he found the players resenting his criticism and relationships deteriorated badly.

"Zimbabweans in general don't like to pick holes in themselves," he observes. "It's one of the traits I've found quite often during my career: it's a lot easier to blame someone else for your problems than actually to look in the mirror and seeing if you're doing the job yourself."

Returning to the problem of staying in a job with the same team for too long, he says, "The difference between coaching the national side and coaching at the Academy is that these guys all leave and I get a brand new set next year. You get a complete turnover each year, so everything you say is new to the new squad. When you're with the national team that doesn't change personnel so quickly and hasn't done for some time, they get bored with you for a short while."

LIFE AFTER WEST INDIES

After his resignation, Dave did a stint as a commentator in England with Sky Television during the Zimbabwe series, and then stayed on to cover televised county one-day matches with them. He spent about four months there before going over to America to drop his eldest daughter off at university in Indiana, and they had a brief family holiday. Since his return he has been fully involved as head coach at the Academy, apart from some commentating during the home series against New Zealand.

"They have a pretty structured daily routine," he says. "They train every morning, which varies from swimming training on Mondays to sprint training on Tuesdays, endurance on Wednesday, more sprints on Thursdays, and Fridays are dedicated purely to fielding and fitness. So in that area we have fielding games and drills. On the technical side we do group coaching sessions where I go through all the shots with them on a Monday; on a Tuesday and a Wednesday we do net practice; on a Thursday we either play a game or have a centre-wicket practice amongst ourselves. And as I say Friday is dedicated to fielding. On Friday I use Rory McWade who's an ex-baseball pitcher, and alongside my fielding drills he's teaching them to throw properly.

"I try where I can to get people in to assist, so if we're doing batting skills on a Monday I try to get people to come in and help on that side, and the same if we're doing bowling skills. It's been a bit difficult of late because it's quite difficult to get people off work to come and help us, and Carl Rackemann is away with the national side, Trevor Penney's away with the B side, so it's quite difficult to find people available to help. I'm hoping to get Kev Curran to give us some assistance on the bowling while Carl's away. That basically is the programme, which works pretty effectively with the blokes."

Dave himself still plays at the age of 43. During the past two seasons he had confined himself to Saturday afternoon social cricket, but "in the build-up throughout the country with two more national league sides and trying to get this first-class structure running throughout the country, sides like Kwekwe and Mutare Sports Club are struggling for players, and Kwekwe in particular didn't have a wicket-keeper, so for my sins I've gone back to play national league for Kwekwe Sports Club, as a wicket-keeper/batsman! It takes me about four days to recover, but it's quite good fun! We've played three games so far, and I got a 55 in one game, and a 30 and a 45, so I've got a few runs. And the keeping's not going too badly - a stumping already and a couple of catches. But the idea is really to help them - it's not about how many runs I can get, and I'm enjoying it. I hadn't realized how much I miss the game."

Is there any possibility he might be tempted back to first-class cricket in the Logan Cup, perhaps captaining the Academy side, as Paul Strang did last year?

"I can't for the Logan Cup because the Academy plays a Logan Cup side and I'll be coaching them. We talked about my possibly playing for the Academy as captain/coach; I don't mind doing that, except that the Logan Cup will be played with our new intake, which is 16 kids. If I play that means six kids will sit out all the time, so I think I'd rather coach the side and let as many of the kids play as possible."

PLAYERS TO WATCH

Dave has had a great deal to do recently with the young players around the country, so I asked him if he had any tips for the future, any young players he thought should, all things being equal, be able to play a major part in the Test team in the future.

"We've only seen a bit of Marillier, and I hope he's given a bit of a run," Dave replies. "He ahs exactly the right temperament to go all the way. So I'm hoping we're going to see a lot of him. He's the sort of guy who's going to play his shots and not just sit on the handle because it's a Test match. I think if he's given the freedom to play the way he can play, he'll go a long way.

"I'm quite impressed with Greg Lamb. He used to bowl little seamers but he's been converted into an off-spinner. He bowls really good off-spinners and has a nice loop, gives the ball a good tweak, and of course he's a good batsman. We haven't really played an off-spinner in the national side for some time; Andy Whittall on and off when he was around, but really we've stuck with our leg-spinners and used Grant Flower as a left-arm spinner, and I think, especially on tours to the subcontinent, we need to have the variation of an off-spinner, one who bats really well in the middle order, as Greg Lamb does. I think he's got a big future in that department.

"Obviously `Syke' Nkala we've seen a fair amount of. He's finding Test cricket quite hard at the moment but he's a very good cricketer, so he'll overcome that and go all the way. Travis Friend - I haven't seen anyone bowl that quick since James Carse was around, not consistently. And he does it easily; he doesn't run up and overexert himself at the crease, and he's still able to get the ball down at 87, 88, 89 miles an hour. And he's 19 years old. He doesn't struggle too much with injuries, so I think he's got a very big future for us.

"There are a couple of others: Douglas Hondo is at the Academy this year and he's in the B side at the moment. Again, a lovely bowler, got great control. He's a big lad, six foot two or three and I think he's still going to grow some more. I think he'll go a long distance in cricket and he can bat as well.

"And of course Taibu. I think Taibu's going to be magnificent; I can't wait for him to play in the national side. We'll have him down probably for the Academy in 2002, but I don't think we'll even see him here because the moment he leaves school I'm sure he'll be in the national side. A tremendous player."

A LOOK TO THE FUTURE

What are Dave's thoughts about the developments in Zimbabwe cricket at present and the direction he thinks it should go in the near future?

"What I'd like to see happen, and I'm talking purely on the cricket side," he says, "we've developed this first-class structure with six sides, and I'd like to see those six sides become fully professional, so your player base of professionals is in the provinces, not held by ZCU. You'd have Manicaland with 15 full-time professionals, Matabeleland with 20, a slightly bigger province, Midlands with 15, Mashonaland with 20, Masvingo with another 15. Then of course there will always be 16 at the Academy.

"If that is run on a fulltime professional basis, as are Western Province, Free State, Natal and so on, your professional player base is in the provinces, and all ZCU has to do is maybe centrally contract ten of the best to make sure they look after them, they don't go and play club cricket in the winter to earn a bit of extra money and so on. Just as they do in any other country. That's where I would like to see Zimbabwe cricket go. It's one thing to have all these first-class sides, but if you're going to have first-class cricket with 80% of your sides being amateurs - Mutare would have eight amateurs and three young ex-Academy players and Midlands would have the same - I believe they've got to be fully professional.

"That takes money, so when it comes down to the finances, the days are gone of hopping into the commercial centres and hoping someone is going to throw in a innings sponsorship to you. Things are tight at the moment. The one thing that is making money is Zimbabwe cricket, and I believe that the ZCU should be taking their yearly profits and sharing it with the provinces. The ZCU should be the sponsors of cricket in Zimbabwe, because it's the national team that makes the money. So they just take off what they need to run cricket next year, and they share out the remainder. If they did that, starting this year, then in two or three years time when it's fully professional, because it will take a while, each province will be financially sound. Then anything gained in boundary board advertising and the like is just additional.

"That to me is the area in which things have to go. Whether the ZCU feel the same way or not I don't know. But I can't see why we shouldn't try to get ourselves to a system that works in every other country. The national team is earning big money with TV rights - this year might not be a big money-earning year in terms of the financial year because there's no more cricket between now and April, but next year we kick off with three international tours that will make an absolute fortune. The ZCU is financially sound and it should be financing the provinces to build them up into professional bodies."

In conclusion, Dave is optimistic about cricket in Zimbabwe, as might be gathered from his positive comments. "I'll say one thing, cricket has a bright future here," he says. "People seem to be down in the doldrums, especially our supporters, when they see us losing from time to time. We've always done that; we've always gone through peaks and troughs. But when you look around and see what's coming up, when you see the youngsters playing at school, club cricket now is getting a bit stronger - I know, because I'm playing in it - you see what's coming through the Academy and you see a first-class system developing, give us five years and we'll be a much stronger national side, with a much sounder base than we've got now."

It is all the more incredible when it is considered what a small population is actively involved in the game at the moment, with well under a million people able to have access to playing the game. "The one thing is that because we do win from time to time," replies Dave, "people get behind us and they back us because they know that we can actually beat the top sides in the world. The only side we haven't beaten in the last ten years is Australia. We've beaten everybody else, and that for a country this size is absolutely astounding. That's what keeps people supporting us and keeps youngsters wanting to play the game, because firstly they'll get exposure to playing the best cricketers in the world, and secondly we can beat them - and that's a nice thing to know."