'On a population basis our teams have too many white players'

Peter Chingoka: 'Claims that we are fast-tracking white players out of the game are based on similarly flimsy evidence' © Getty Images

The Zimbabwe Cricket Union has been accused by sections of the British media of being a politically influenced organisation with an agenda to fast-track white cricketers out of the game. Some of its directors, notably Ozias Bvute and Macsood Ebrahim, have been typecast by journalists as hard-liners with dark agendas of their own, on the basis of other people's views rather than first-hand evidence.

Let me take the opportunity to counter some of these claims by explaining how cricket in Zimbabwe is administered and what structures have been put in place to spread the game to more people than ever before in our country.

The ZCU has a full-time administration led by managing director Vince Hogg, a white man who joined the Union two years ago after working in a senior position in Zimbabwean commerce. There are 12 elected members of the board, each of whom serves a 12-month term. The current board includes four white, four black and four Asian directors, even though there are about 20,000 white and slightly more people of Asian descent living in Zimbabwe today, out of a total population of 12 million.

With such a diverse mixture of ethnic and cultural backgrounds it is difficult to see how the board can be accused of being made up of so-called `political appointees', when two thirds of it represents minority groups.

Like directors throughout the cricketing world they are elected for what they bring to the game and not for their political affiliation. Indeed, they are of such diverse political persuasions that to insist on particular affiliation would be counterproductive and divisive in an organisation of directors, management, secretariat, playing, coaching and other staff of widely differing cultural, religious and political backgrounds.

At provincial level the management of the game is even more heavily weighted in favour of white and Asian administrators.

Claims that we are fast-tracking white players out of the game are based on similarly flimsy evidence. Look at the considerable time, money and resources invested in talented young white players in the national team like Sean Ervine, Andy Blignaut, Mark Vermeulen, Travis Friend, Gavin Ewing and others.

It goes further. Our squad at the recent ICC Under-19 Cricket World Cup tournament in Bangladesh, where we recorded famous victories over the defending champions Australia and New Zealand, contained six white players out of 14. And the intake of 16 for our Academy programme this year includes seven white cricketers.

How can any of this be construed as wishing to fast-track white players out of the game? Indeed, on the basis of population, there is a disproportionately high percentage of white players in our teams.

In the longer term we realise that, with dwindling white and Asian communities, Zimbabwe will increasingly rely on the majority of the population to provide future players. That is why the ZCU has employed more than 80 full-time coaches to take the game into schools across the country, where cricket has never been played before. That is why cricket is now the fastest-growing sport in Zimbabwe and why there are more than 60,000 young people involved in the game at school, recreational and first-class level.