tawandamusarurwa
Arthur Choga
The Art of Sport
IN the end, there was deep pain, except this time, it was tempered with a real sense of progress and positivity for the future.
Sounds like a line from a sad love story, doesn’t it?
In a way, it is a sad love story — Loads of potential for happiness and plenty of obstacles to overcome. There were also glimpses of what a happily-ever-after could look like, then a dash of sad reality. These lines sum up performances of three national teams that have been doing duty on the global stage in recent weeks.
The national cricket team, netball team and national Under-20 rugby team were all on global assignments. While they did not secure gold, they brought some smiles.
For most of June, we celebrated feats of the cricket team — the Chevrons. They are certainly the new darlings of sports fans everywhere.
Global news agencies and the International Cricket Council even posted images of the famous Castle Corner. People took days off, dressed in work suits or school uniforms — depending on the dress code — and spent the day partying. It was a good innings.
Harare Sports Club has become the sports venue of choice. Even people without any knowledge of the game took some days off to celebrate with the Chevrons.
The ambiance shocked global platforms.
The camaraderie was like a throwback to the old days of the football Warriors, when people would go to the stadium early to avoid missing out. For the first time in a long time, the gates of a full Harare Sports Club were closed and people were turned away.
Happy days indeed.
Then, in just half a week, the euphoria was washed away by a sequence of results that left the team out of the tournament.
Separately, the Under-20 team went to the World Rugby Trophy in Kenya with high expectations after beating the hosts in the final of the African qualifying tournament.
An opening loss to Scotland and a morale-sapping defeat by Uruguay, despite leading earlier on, brought the team down to earth.
Victory over the United States left them playing for fifth place against fellow Africans Kenya. The youngsters turned on the style in an exhibition of free-flowing rugby, laced with flicks and youthful exuberance, that stunned many viewers and brought joy to the fans.
The netball team also travelled to the World Cup in South Africa in a blaze of social media posts that clearly showed they have done their digital homework.
They captured the attention of the nation, especially against the backdrop of lingering memories of their last outing at the World Cup in Liverpool, England, through which some players earned moves to big leagues and became household names. The Gems, however, lost their opening match to the Diamonds of Australia 86-30.
They went on to lose their next game to Fiji.
But many expected Zimbabwe to win this one.
They also went on to lose to Tonga.
They then showed up, beating Barbados, Sri Lanka and Singapore to bring the smiles back.
These performances showed that, on a good day, we can play.
However, the challenge has come against elite competition, where some of our most glaring shortcomings are exposed.
Issues such as the sheer size difference for the Young Sables against the majority of their opponents become a factor. As usually happens after these outings, the fallout is evident on both social media and in the mainstream media.
It will naturally be followed by an acceptance that “at least we finished in position X or position Y”, then we wait until the next major tournament. The federations behind these teams have clearly been putting in hard work.
World Cup qualification is a process that requires extreme dedication and considerable skills. What happens after these events similarly matters, just as much as the preparation that goes into them.
A big question is on how thorough we are in our evaluation systems after these tournaments.
What kind of analytics are we applying to our sports to measure individual performance and track the effectiveness of our teams?
How much time, resources and technology are we dedicating to data analysis and personalised peak performance building?
The hope is that the new winds blowing through sports, including the new developments at ZIFA, which has generated its fair share of agony and excitement over the years, will result in the kind of planning, financing and partnership building required to turn our teams from participants to genuine contenders at these world events.
We have already seen that the potential to qualify is there. We now need to stop talking about potential and turn it into action to attain next-level results.
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Online Reporter