Spare a thought for our cricket

Robson Sharuko Senior Sports Editor
ONE thing that immediately struck you, as a spectator at Harare Sports Club yesterday during the Twenty20 match between Zimbabwe and Pakistan, was the absence of a sponsor’s brand on the jerseys of the hosts.Of course, their opponents had no such problems and the logo of Pepsi screamed loudly from the front part of their jerseys and could also be seen on the sleeves of their shirts.

The last time that Zimbabwe had played an international game, in the ODI series against India here, the local players actually wore jerseys that carried the sponsorship logo of an Indian company.

Given that the series was being screened live in India, it made a lot of commercial sense for that Indian company to use the Zimbabwe team for its business interests.

But the big question is why don’t we have a local company sponsoring the only team that plays regularly, at World Cup level, and brings teams, who can be called world champions, to our sporting fields?

India are the current world champions in cricket and they were here for five ODIs, something that will never be delivered by football because to expect world champions Spain to come and play here, not in a competitive match but even an exhibition one, would be chasing a wild dream.

Pakistan, who are here for a month, are the number two ranked nation in the world in Twenty20 cricket and yesterday at Harare Sports Club, the globe’s second best team took on our local boys.

Given that this is precisely a David versus Goliath contest, one would expect that it’s the little David, in this case the Zimbabwe cricket team, which needs all the helping hand that can be given to make them competitive.

Unfortunately, it’s the Goliath, in this case Pakistan, who are getting the big helping hand and none comes as big as sponsorship.
Those who only care about statistics will just concentrate on the fact that Zimbabwe lost the game by 25 runs.

For some of us, who look at the uneven playing field of a very poorly funded team battling against the giants of this world, what we will treasure is the way our boys, with everything against them, battled gamely and remained in the game, with a possibility of winning it, for three sessions of this game.

By the halfway stage of our chase, we were still in the game but then the Pakistan spinners came into play, squeezed life out of our chase and, at a crucial moment, the Zimbabwe coaching staff blundered terribly in sending Tymcen Maruma when the game needed Elton Chigumbura to come in with his big-hitting.

Brendan Taylor, the Zimbabwe skipper who remained unbeaten at the end, said his charges fought bravely, which is a fact, but he knows what more they could have done if they had just a slice of the financial resources that power Pakistan cricket.

It’s not only the domestic sponsors who are letting down cricket, it’s also the politics of this world that have seen this game turn into a pawn used by some Western politicians to drive their agenda in a bigger political battle against Zimbabwe.

Yesterday, The Herald highlighted that Zimbabwe Cricket would have been in a far better financial position, capable of paying its players in time and retaining those believe their salary should be guaranteed or they will take their talents to the English county scene, had they not been victims of politics.

If Zimbabwe could host box-office tours against England and Australia there was no question that the local cricket organisation’s finances would be in the black and the game standing on a firm financial footing.

Australia and England national cricket teams have not been to Zimbabwe since 2004, for political reasons, and that has come at a huge cost to the local organisation.

And this is why?
“Based on the fact that they would have come to Zimbabwe after every other second year according to the ICC Future Tours principle of reciprocity, Australia and England have not been to Zimbabwe four times each,” insiders within the ZC revealed yesterday.

“One England incoming tour would gross about US$5 million for Zimbabwe and an Australian one US$3 million.
“In terms of lost revenue then: England — 4 x 5 m = 20 million; Australia — 4 x 3 m = 12 million. Clearly then, Zimbabwe has lost more than US$30 million because the tours have not happened.

“But money is not the only loss. The players have missed out on exposure to top-level competition that would have increased their experience and so improved their game. Even if the tours had comprised ODIs only as did India to Zimbabwe, one is talking about 20 matches against England and 12 against Australia. And that is a lot of learning.

“The blanks left on the international fixtures calendar because the tours did not happen was unwanted down-time which also had the effect of undoing momentum in-between the tours that did happen.

“Further, because of the stature of Australia and England, victories against them earn more points than those against say Bangladesh because the points are weighted. Thus, Zimbabwe lost the opportunity to possibly move up certainly on the ICC ODI rankings.”