ZC Heartbreak Can it Get Any Worse?

Perkins-Tino Bare

“I played too much cricket in my life to fall back now on ‘what ifs’ and ‘maybes’ so, like the players, I will accept that we were not good enough. One win in six matches is immense disappointment. The future might be bleak, with qualification almost certainly required for the next ICC Cricket World Cup, and ZC facing a battle to attract fixtures in the short and medium term, either home or away, the players will need to embrace the fact that their futures lie in their hands” , Alastair Campbell told standard sport.

So as our boys left the center stage back into the dark, gloomy background of ZC to most it was more of the same, `so close yet so far` but this time it was different the guys represented us quite well during the course of the whole tournament despite leaving with just one victory and one would be tempted to agree that if Dav Whatmore is to get more time with the team he is to build he should therefore build a formidable side indeed.

This then becomes troublesome in that 11 years after we started rebuilding well rebranded into a dominantly colored-playing nation we are already talking of giving the coach more time to build why not tackle those frailties that everyone noticed at the World Cup for the betterment of our team and not just try to ignore them and hope for different results.

One thing that was peculiar about this past tourney was that for once in a while we failed to qualify not because we lacked the quality but this time, though we had the quality which was going to make progression into the next round an easy task for them, they simply did not have the discipline nor the stability in the team some players themselves were not even up for the task and the squad itself was limited especially our top order batsman and in the fielding department it was worrisome as we then had to resort to shifting bowlers to the extent of resorting to players such as Hamilton Masakadza and just too many dropped catches.

In terms of batting we have only two men to talk of and that is Brendan Taylor and Sean Williams as the top-order batsmen was our biggest letdown as though we had gone into the tournament with Chamu Chibhabha and Sikander Raza as our openers they failed us terribly as players such as Solomon Mire had then to be promoted to the top-order despite his awful performance throughout the tournament and this was just the same. Looking at the openers themselves Sikander Raza could only manage a total of 125 runs throughout the entire tournament at an average of 20.83 per game. This is also the case with Chamu Chibhabha who had a total of 122 runs throughout the entire tournament with half of them coming against South Africa and also with Hamilton could only manage 98 with 80 of those runs coming in our opener against South Africa which is simply unbelievable.

All these are attainable figures that a batsman can garner in an innings which took our openers 6 matches to attain which just shows that these three were not up for the task and they greatly let us down as they have always done and we need brutal openers and this does not necessarilly mean new openers for Chamu and Raza can both be brutal but seems when most need they buckle under the pressure which was more or less the case with what happened during the whole tournament. Throughout the tournament the top order batsmen failed to get off to a strong start and one would be deeply dissappointed in Hamilton Masakadza, whose absence from the tournament did the exact opposite.

The middle order did come through for us though in especially Brendan Taylor who in spite of our knockout is still currently the tournament`s 4^th ranked batsman with a total of 433 runs. His two successive centuries against India and Ireland are the highest individual scores for the team during the tournament and yes we just yet another fantastic player whilst Sean Williams currently holds the 3^rd highest strike rate of 109 and is ranked as the 11^th best overall batsman with a total of 339 runs and an average of almost 64.

This then saw us having only two batsman in our mid-order and unless ZC addresses this is quick enough then most batsmen are just going to continue being in the line-up to just to add up the numbers. We seemed to have lacked both from our batsmen discipline from those who could rack in the runs and the quality to complement it. Solomon Mire is probably the biggest flop and those are just the results of relying on someone with grade cricket to boast of.

In terms of fielding we simply lacked the quality itself as we only have Tendai Chatara to talk about. We dropped too many catches and as Dean Du Plessis quite rightly pointed out that `the death bowling and quite possibly the fitness of some of the players` was our biggest letdown and this was seen as the bowlers themselves seemed not to be conditioned for a World cup cricket match and though one would be quick to blame ZC for ensuring the fitness of the players its also equally the players` themselves who have the problem as they are `bulky` and cannot therefore make those quick runs. Fellows like John Nyumbu who dazzled in last year`s tri-series and were all left out

With a batting lineup that we cannot rely on and an equally fielding team the team did not play as a unit as we had individuals sticking out to do the job whilst the rest were just there to add the numbers (and perhaps spend a good vacation). ZC keeps resorting to the same old players that we had ten years ago as if those are the only guys we have. We`ll always need new players in our team and right now when the morale is high is a good time to add depth to the team than to chase the same players that we need.

With the ICC having announced that the 2019 ICC World Cup to be hosted by England and Wales willbe reduced to a 10-team event where the top seven teams in the ICC rankings, as of September 30 2017, will earn automatic progress along with the hosts England with a further 10 teams would then compete for the two remaining slots at the 2018 Cricket World Cup Qualifier in Bangladesh pitting teams ranked ninth through to 12th and the top six teams from the World Cricket League Division-one. With Zimbabwe currently ranked 10^th this then makes the qualification process inevitable for the Chevrons and with it being their major source of income for both the players and Zimbabwe Cricket as an organisation itself one can only wonder how long we still have to wait for the return of the glory days.