Zimbabwe Cricket Online volume 4, issue 22, 14 February 2003

This has been a controversial week for Zimbabwe cricket. On the same day we had England finally walking out of their scheduled match in Harare, and then the statement by Andy Flower and Henry Olonga at the start of the match against Namibia.

Contents

• Zimbabwe v Namibia: scorecard and report
• Gavin Rennie: first-class career record.

We have received many letters about both issues, especially supporting the two players. However this is the website of the Zimbabwe Cricket Union, who maintain their non-political stance, and so it is not possible to discuss the political issues involved here.

It can be said, though, that English cricketers and administrators made themselves a laughing stock by the way they handled the Zimbabwe match issue. One day it was player security, the next it was a moral issue, then the safety of possible demonstrators was their concern, and it ended up with being player security again. It makes one wonder if the real issue wasn't public opinion back home and they were looking for any excuse to appease it.

Are their consciences really so sensitive? If so, then those consciences will no doubt tell them that their boycott of Zimbabwe actually did nothing to help the people they are so concerned about, but there are other things they can do to demonstrate that concern. They can start supporting the organizations that are feeding the starving or helping them in other ways, or at the very least raise some money to provide much-needed kit for the development programme.

We wait to see what positive ideas they will come up with. It would do a great deal to restore the sorely tarnished image of the English. Never before has Zimbabwe cricket needed the support of the rest of the cricketing world as in the present days.

Congratulations to Craig Wishart on his record-breaking 172 not out in the match against Namibia. He would be the first to admit, though, that the weak and inexperienced opposition - with all due respect to Namibia, who have done wonders in a very short time - took some of the gloss off his achievement, considering the difficult circumstances under which some of Zimbabwe's great centuries have been made. Let us hope he will be able to perform similarly against the big guns in the group.

This is a small issue of ZCO as all the cricket in Zimbabwe at the moment is centred round the World Cup. Much more detail of that can be found on the ZCU website or the CricInfo main page. I am also heavily involved in M-Web's programme to provide constantly updated World Cup scores on the mobile phone network, so this is a very busy time for me!