ICC boss to address Press conference

Harare Bureau
INTERNATIONAL Cricket Council chief executive Dave Richardson, who is in the country on a milestone visit to help Zimbabwe Cricket deal with issues related to their financial challenges, will address a media conference in Harare this afternoon.

Zimbabwe Cricket chairman, Tavengwa Mukuhlani, will also address the same Press conference in the Mirabelle Room of the Meikles Hotel at 12.15 hours.

The duo will tackle issues related to the outcome of the meetings they have been holding since Richardson flew into this country this week.

Richardson arrived in the company of the ICC chief financial officer Ankur Khanna.

Their visit has already been interpreted as another powerful endorsement of a grand masterplan to breathe life into the country’s second biggest sporting discipline.

It’s the first visit by an ICC delegation since the leadership of the world cricket controlling body decided against putting Zimbabwe’s membership on notice, during their meeting in Dublin, Ireland, at the end of June and, in the process, ensured that they will continue to inject substantial funding into the domestic game.

The decision by the ICC to throw their full weight behind the revival of cricket in this country, rather than back Zimbabwe’s suspension, was a massive boardroom victory for the game here and ensured that the first tranche of the $73 million financial injection, in this current cycle, was released into the ZC coffers last month.

Had ZC’s Full Membership status been suspended, during that make-or-break meeting in Ireland, where the issue of the mountain of debt which had been choking the organisation was tackled, the funding from the ICC for this cycle would have been significantly reduced from $73 million to about $8 million.

Mukuhlani and the organisation’s consultant Vince van der Bijl, a South African national with a vast network of connections in international cricket, played very key roles in the resolution of that explosive case in Ireland.

The injection of funds also enabled ZC to pay off outstanding dues to their players, technical and office staff and it also opened a window for the likes of Brendan Taylor, Graeme Cremer and Craig Ervine — who had excused themselves from national duty because of a pay dispute — returning to the Chevrons’ fold.