Zimbabwe Cricket Online editorial, issue 21

Welcome to the first edition of Zimbabwe Cricket Online for the 2000/01 season. It has been rather late in coming but we are still in the process of establishing the CricInfo branch in Zimbabwe, and we have not been unaffected by the problems that seem unavoidable in the country at present, which have delayed significantly our first issue.

We have again experienced difficulty in persuading those who agreed to contribute actually to do so, but hopefully this will soon become less of a problem as we become fully organized and are able to start paying for contributions. We are particularly looking to increase contributions on provincial, club and school cricket. In the short term, with no cricket being played in Zimbabwe above club level before the beginning of February, when the rescheduled Logan Cup programme starts, it may not be possible to produce an issue every week, but we will do what we can.

A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since our last issue in April. Zimbabwe's cricketers lost all their international matches in West Indies and made a disastrous start to their England tour, and sources close to the team believe the players allowed themselves to become seriously distracted by the on-going pay dispute with the Zimbabwe Cricket Union. Andy Flower was a leading figure in this dispute, a role that was to do much to cost him the captaincy, although he was one of the few players able to provide normal service while the controversy was going on.

Andy did a superb job captaining the team and leading from the front, maintaining a Test batting average of 44, and had the support of all his players. He led their regrouping after the disastrous Lord's Test and Zimbabwe actually had the better of England in the rain-damaged Second Test at the Trent Bridge ground in Nottingham. Zimbabwe then beat West Indies, whom they had never before defeated, three times in succession to reach the final of the triangular tournament against England. The best victory of all came at the new Riverside Ground at Chester-le-Street in Durham, on a fine pitch where Murray Goodwin (112 not out) and Grant Flower (96 not out) shared a magnificent match-winning partnership of 186 to overhaul a West Indian total of 287.

England, though, were just too good, beating Zimbabwe twice after losing the first of three group matches. Their pace attack, led by Darren Gough, Andy Caddick and Alan Mullally, was so intense and accurate that they always put pressure on our batsmen who were quite unable to score at a reasonable rate at the start of their innings, even if they kept their wickets intact. Inevitably in the final at Lord's Zimbabwe continued their usual habit of losing the toss when it was important and were put in when conditions favoured the bowlers most early on. They never looked likely to post a challenging target. So good was England's bowling that it must be admitted they would probably still have won the match had Zimbabwe been able to put them in, but it would have been a much better contest.

On the team's return to Zimbabwe came the shattering news for the players that Andy Flower had been sacked as captain. The Zimbabwe Cricket Union cited four reasons for this: the team's unprofessional treatment of coach Dave Houghton on the West Indies tour, the mutiny on the pay dispute, certain demands Flower made as captain that the ZCU considered unreasonable, and what they saw as Flower's dictatorial approach to selection policy. As this magazine is part of the official ZCU site, such matters cannot be discussed here, but the facts need to be stated.

Heath Streak accepted the position of captain, and did not have an easy job. A dispute over selection took place immediately before the First Test against New Zealand, as many players believed there had been outside interference in the selection of the team and Guy Whittall actually withdrew from the side on a matter of principle. The ZCU's position was that there had merely been a misunderstanding and moved to remedy the situation. But the players, allowing themselves to be further distracted, performed very patchily against New Zealand and for the first time lost both Tests in a home series.

The first one-day international went the same way, but after this the players had a team meeting, pulled themselves together, and the change in attitude brought instant results. They beat New Zealand twice on successive days in Bulawayo to take the one-day series 2-1, their first one-day series victory for almost four years. To put the matter in perspective, though, New Zealand were seriously hampered by injuries, with several players, including key all-rounder Chris Cairns, unable to play. Nevertheless nobody watching these matches could deny that the Zimbabwe team played superbly.

They then progressed to Kenya for the ICC Knockout Competition, where they met New Zealand again and lost, although it was perhaps some consolation that New Zealand were to go on and win the tournament. At the time of writing they are playing in Sharjah, where conditions tend to resemble those in the Indian subcontinent, and have lost their first three matches out of four, with only a dead match against India to come. They have played well at times, but are still not consistently at their best. Hopefully, though, as ZCU chief executive Dave Ellman-Brown implies in this issue, the disputes between players and administration are at an end.

Mr Ellman-Brown also outlines the rest of the season for Zimbabwe cricketers. The programme includes Zimbabwe's first venture into winter cricket, when India and West Indies are expected to tour to play Tests against Zimbabwe and take part in a triangular tournament. Rain is very rare at that time of year and the skies are usually cloudless. It remains to be seen how shorter daylight hours will affect play, and especially how the pitches will play at this time of year, especially at Harare Sports Club early in the morning. Still, winter cricket has been played for many years in the districts and they do not find it an undue problem.

There have been several recent additions to other parts of the Zimbabwe Cricket site. Players' biographies are in the process of being updated, and these can be found in the biography section. The recently updated players are Test players Heath Streak, Alistair Campbell, Stuart Carlisle, Pommie Mbangwa, Trevor Gripper, Mluleki Nkala and Trevor Madondo, and two of the latest international players Doug Marillier and Travis Friend. In addition we have now completed our biographies of the current Academy players with Richard Sims and Andrew Stone. Soon there will be a new intake and next February and March the 2001 Academy will play in the Logan Cup competition.[Fixtures]

In addition a great deal of new statistical information has been added. Test and one-day international records have been updated to the start of the Sharjah tournament and the latter will be updated again after it. This includes records against individual countries. The next section to be revamped will be the first-class cricket section and detailed individual player records.

In next week's issue we hope to bring more information about the CFX Academy in an interview with director Gwynne Jones, and a closer look at the outstanding progress made in the Midlands over the last couple of years, as well as other topical issues.