admin
Eddie Chikamhi Senior Sports Reporter
LEGENDARY former Zimbabwe cricketer Dave Houghton who resigned as Chevrons coach this week revealed he had issues with the selection of the national team.
Houghton, who is now set to be redeployed to a more developmental role within Zimbabwe Cricket, said the selectors were not widening the net to the players that were shining in the domestic cricket competitions, in favour of the established names.
Speaking before he stepped down, Houghton said he would love to be involved more in developing players that would help grow the selection base, as selectors sometimes had limited choices under the current set up.
“Of course, I would like to see us getting a few more, younger players coming in. I guess one of the biggest problems that our selectors have is that when choosing people, we are not choosing on the back of fantastic form in first class cricket.
“We are choosing on the back of maybe this guy could be better than this guy. That’s a bad position to be selecting from but unfortunately that’s where we are,” he said.
The Chevrons have faced challenges with the established players that have been failing to step up to the plate in both domestic and international matches.
“When I talk to the batsmen in the changing room ‘how do you expect to score a hundred for Zimbabwe when you are not scoring a hundred for your franchise in domestic cricket’ because that’s where it is.
“Even the replacements we bring in; no one is scoring hundreds. So we are asking a lot of them to step up to international levels for hundreds.
“I think our batting team, we have (Sikandar) Raza who averages 37 and then two other people in the 20s and everyone else is averaging in the teens.
“That’s where we are at the moment but you replace them with what? Are the hundreds coming in the hundreds coming in the franchise games? There are none. So it’s a difficult one because you are having to select rather with what you have.”
Houghton was appointed national team coach last year and his arrival coincided with a huge change in fortunes for a team that had been desperately low in confidence.
But he experienced the best and the worst of the Chevrons in the last 18 months that he has been in charge.
The coach apparently was not happy the Chevrons had relapsed to the state he found them in when he was appointed to deal with their shattered confidence following a series of battering in international assignments under Lalchand Rajput.
The former Zimbabwe Test skipper has been thinking a lot about his future recently. The poor results that saw the team miss out on two global events as well as the recent series defeat in Namibia and at home against Ireland made his job difficult.
“The problem just appears to be their confidence. It’s not easy to just put your hand on something and change the confidence within a team.
“As you start to lose a couple of games and you lose that confidence. These guys were low when I first came in. We played a completely new brand of cricket and that comes with confidence.
“We played with positiveness with the bat, we put pressure on the opposition and ran down the wicket of their batsmen and we played a few funky shots, and we were going. We are not playing one shot like that now, and that is confidence.
“So the confidence is gone and as we lost a couple of games it got worse and worse. So it needs to change and for that change hopefully, maybe we need to bring in a couple of consultants, a different voice in the change room. Maybe that can help change things,” he said.
Online Reporter