Makovah defends under-fire selections

Bruce Makovah, the Zimbabwe cricket national selectors convener, has dismissed critcism leveled at the squad picked for the A-team series against Bangladesh A which starts on Saturday.

Several choices have been attacked by critics, and the presence of players with no top-flight experience has also come under the spotlight. Makovah and his co-selectors opted not to pick anyone from the breakaway leagues which contain a number of leading clubs who have ceded from those organised by Zimbabwe Cricket.

"ZC is not running separately," Makovah told Zimbabwe's Independent. "People cannot just walk in and walk out as they wish. These players were encouraged to play the official league. So those who were prepared to rebel we did not look at them. Besides I did not see any statistics from their league. I only got to know that they were playing through hearsay."

"If we look at the squad that was selected, the players came from various provinces. Also if you look at the statistics Mashonaland came last in the league. It automatically shows that the other provinces have a pool of players as well."

One critic pointed out to Cricinfo that Mashonaland had finished last because almost all their leading players had defected to the breakaway organisation.

"Basically this is a first major step to give other people an opportunity and widen the player base in the country," Makovah added. "Our cricket has been based on recycling players, and this affected us the last time when players decided to rebel. We found ourselves in a crisis because we had no broad player base."

But one former Test player said that the standard in the official leagues was dire. "Two years ago none of them were even in a first league side - they were playing third division cricket," he said. "The cricketers averaging 60+ in the national league this year were not getting to double figures a year ago in the top league. Anyone that understands cricket is not going to believe that there has been improvement or that the game is growing."