adminJeffrey Murimbechi Sports Correspondent
The current frail state of Zimbabwe’s national club cricket structure should trigger alarm bells ringing about the future of the national team’s Test status.
National selector and Southern Rocks chief executive, Givemore Makoni, believes there is need for people to start getting concerned.
“There is no strong club structure and you cannot survive as a Test playing nation without one,” said Makoni.
“Club cricket is next to non-existent, at the moment there are clubs that get together and play in the league, which is not well co-ordinated.
“You find that clubs in Mashonaland are paying to play, what we know is that a club will pay to affiliate to an association after which the association comes up with league.
“Things such as ground preparation are part of each club’s job but it is not the job of the association to be billing clubs on participation and ground preparation fees.
“Clubs in Mashonaland have done well in the sense that they have pooled resources together so that they play cricket but if you look at the competition, level and quality of cricket you will find it is not the best.
“The things are not well co-ordinated, you find that one game will be played with umpires and next week there will be no umpires or the outfield is not cut or the wicket is not prepared it is not professional.”
Club cricket is the first stage in the player pathway to the national team is easier and cheaper to facilitate, which makes it possible to be played in between franchise seasons.
Other Test nations such as England invest a lot of time into perfecting club structures to the point of contracting overseas players to maintain a highly competitive structure and to keep their players match fit for regular seasons.
“If you look now there is too much starting and stopping in our programs, we only started the first class league on the 7th of December and have stopped.
That really affects cricket in Zimbabwe.
If we have a strong club structure which is well coordinated and run well you will find that there will be no break in our cricket,” said Makoni.
He blamed Zimbabwe Cricket for taking on the ambitious and unsustainable task of running of clubs and their members.
“I blame Zimbabwe Cricket because at some stage they took over clubs and they started running clubs on behalf of its members clubs got used to being spoon-fed as a result.
“Now that things are not moving as perfectly and normally as they used to, clubs are finding it difficult to learn the responsibility of looking after themselves.”
During Makoni’s playing days at Takashinga in Highfields, it was the duty of the members of the club to ensure that basics such as match balls, refreshments, umpires and ground maintenance were taken care of.
“For you to notice that there is a problem in our cricket system you look at our Under-19s,” said Makoni.
“They are schoolboy cricketers who are competing against men as seen in our tour of India last year.
This is because there is a stage that those boys are not exposed to.
“When Elton Chigumbura and Brendan Taylor played in the Under-19 World Cup they were club cricketers.
They had made great stats in club cricket, Chigumbura actually started playing for Takashinga first team when he was 16.” Before the franchise structure was introduced in 2009, club cricket was vibrant.
“Back in our day players were not selected from first-class structures because there were only four first-class games played.
“The stronghold was the national league which was club cricket and the other stronghold was the Vigne Cup in Mashonaland whereby all teams within other provinces will go and look for games against teams in Mashonaland.
“We have moved away from that because we have franchise cricket which is a very good level of cricket but if you look at where we are getting our players now, you will see that they are jumping a certain stage in all the provinces,” said Makoni.
Online Reporter