Zimbabwe's cricket chiefs reflect a land's tyranny
Even by his own standards, Peter Roebuck’s fusillade against cricket inside Zimbabwe in The Age is remarkable, leaving readers in no doubt where he stands.
Martin Williamson
25-Feb-2013
ESPNcricinfo Ltd
Even by his own standards, Peter Roebuck’s fusillade against cricket inside Zimbabwe in The Age is remarkable, leaving readers in no doubt where he stands.
The leaders of the game in that benighted land work hand in hand with Zanu pf. Peter Chingoka, the long standing chairman of a disreputable board, is allied to the influential Mujuru faction. He has mining interests, vast investments and houses overseas. Ozias Bvute, his opportunistic and thuggish CEO, is cut from the same stone. These fat cats ... gained from the activities of the CIO, Green Bombers and all the other ghastly representatives of the repressive state.
With an ICC delegation in town, Roebuck asks where the millions of dollars handed to the Zimbabwe board has gone.
Judging from the unpaid hotel bills, unpaid wages, overgrown club grounds, cancelled matches and disintegrating standards, precious little has been spent directly on cricket. Mind you, ZC did manage to send 14 officials on its last under-19 tour to South Africa.
And of the ICC and it's previous fact-finding missions?
Doubtless these delegates will not copy previous emissaries by idling in five-star hotels while sipping copious amounts of whisky with their hosts. Percy Sonn set the benchmark in that regard. The bitter, clever, late and unlamented former president of the ICC enjoyed his whisky almost as much as his hosts and, like them, ignored calls for justice and the cries of the common man.
Ray Mali, a foolish and compromised impostor, replaced Sonn, was promptly taken on the guided tour and announced that Zimbabwe was bound to go to the top of the one-day rankings. Reassured that their positions and fortunes were safe, Chingoka, Bvute and their relatives must have smiled to hear this absurdity.
Martin Williamson is executive editor of ESPNcricinfo and managing editor of ESPN Digital Media in Europe, the Middle East and Africa