Desperate times call for desperate measures

a number of years is a settled opening combination at the top of the order.
This may very well be due to the fact that most of the imported players playing for the franchises are opening batsmen which mean that you will always have someone with a great deal of potential missing out.
Although it is important to have the franchise system as competitive as possible, a balance will have to be found as to what sort of players should be imported.
In other words, maybe we should focus on importing fast bowlers.
Even if they may be past their best, they would still be a handful in the country’s domestic Cricket and their knowledge and experience would possibly go a very long way towards helping the established bowlers.
Brendan Taylor had his hands full yesterday as his strike bowler, Brian Vitori, and his experienced bowler, Elton Chigumbura, were massacred for 197 runs in 19 overs.
It begs a number of questions.
Why did Taylor continue to bowl both bowlers when they were unable to land the ball on the right spots and presented the Kiwi batsmen with batting practice?
Having said that, though, when a team is on the rampage and plundering six after six, it can happen that a skipper ends up watching helplessly like a rabbit caught in the headlights.
I feel it would now have been a bad idea if the captain had, maybe, used the likes of Malcolm Waller and even turned his own bowling for a few overs, just to try and break the pattern of full tosses by the medium pacers.
Taylor showed that once again he towers head and shoulders above the rest of the top order.
But even his efforts were swept aside by a relentless New Zealand as their top six got runs and got them at an alarming rate.
Taylor’s effort of 128 runs in the three matches was pretty decent but if you take in to account that Rob Nicol blasted 146 in one single innings, you can appreciate that none of the batsmen posed any form of threat.
Another question that needs to be asked is – Do the players practice their fielding and if so for how long?
Do they only practice their fielding in net sessions?
A dedicated sportsman practices on his strengths and works tirelessly at improving his weaknesses. Even if you don’t become the best at what you are practicing at, you still will see a marked improvement in whatever you are doing.
Instead of improving, the fielding has continued to decline with simple catches going down and a big amount of misfields allowing the opposition to comfortably turn singles into two runs and two runs into three.
It may very well be possible for a change at the top. It may be necessary to get a coach who is not afraid to crack the whip with authority and to deal with players who clearly aren’t pulling their weight.
After Zimbabwe’s fairy-tale return to Test Cricket last August, head coach Alan Butcher said that when he took over, he felt that the team was in desperate need of a little love as he felt that too many people were too critical of them.
Butcher is a gentleman who will always go out of his way to not only greet you but to engage you in conversation.
But, clearly, the gentle and soft approach is not working and it may be time to employ someone with a little more steel.
That would be sad, though, as Butcher has played a very big part in the successes of the team. Whatever decisions are made, and surely decisions will have to be made after this disastrous tour, the game’s fans in Zimbabwe are still in a state of shock as to why the team became worse by each game.