Aussies coming, potential thriller

Zimbabwe in just over a month’s time.
They will engage the hosts in two four-day matches as well as taking part in a Tri-series competition with South Africa A who will no doubt also be sending out some players who have also tasted international cricket.
This is exactly what Zimbabwe needed before they re-enter the Test arena.
A few questions need to be asked however.
Should we really be getting involved in Tri-series matches when we are on the brink of returning to Test cricket?
It may be and quite rightly argued that time would be a factor because there is no doubt that both A squad players would have various commitments with their state sides and franchises before the season gets underway.
But surely the goal is to get the players to play as much four-day cricket as possible before meeting Bangladesh in August. Instead of both teams coming out at the same time there could possibly have been an agreement reached where one team came out to play two four-day matches followed by the other.
Be that as it may cricket lovers are going to be treated to some entertaining cricket as the likes of Tim Pain, Callum Ferguson, Philip Hughes and exciting middle order batsman Usman Khawaja will be a real handful for the Zimbabwean bowlers to deal with. Then add the aggressive and-in-your-face Ben Hilfenhaus, whose devastating away swingers caused England’s top order batsmen many a headache in the Ashes, alongside Jason Krejza’s skillful off spin, then you can see the test for batsmen who are far from confident when it comes to playing spin bowling. Another question which begs answering is why is there such a delay in trimming the squad of just over 30 players down to the final squad of say 16 or 18 bearing in mind that certain players should be looked at as longer version players and others as one-day specialists?
If the final squad could be named the players could slowly start preparing themselves mentally and clear their heads of the off-season cobwebs while the coaching and fitness staff could drill them in technical and fitness areas.
While the IPL finally comes to its conclusion, the big question from a Zimbabwean interest is – will Raymond Price be given another chance to redeem himself after his somewhat disappointing spell of 3 overs at a cost of 33 runs in his first outing?
One wonders why he had to wait so long before getting a game as he is ranked number two in the ODI world rankings. One gets the feeling that regardless of rank if it had been a South African or Australian player he would have played on more than one occasion.
Dean du Plessis, a cricket commentator, writes exclusively for The Saturday Herald, the newspaper with the biggest sports coverage in the country.