Chronicle Editor
Ricky Zililo, Senior Sports Reporter
BASKETBALL Union of Zimbabwe (BUZ) has withdrawn the country’s Under-16 teams from the continent’s premier basketball finals, the Afro-basket Championships, after failing to get clearance from the Sports and Recreation Commission (SRC).
The continental juniors’ championships for boys and girls will be held in Egypt from August 6-15.
Abandoning their quest to send the Under-16s comes a month after BUZ’s request to send the Under-18 boys’ and girls’ teams to the DR Congo for a 3×3 World Cup qualifier was declined by the SRC.
The Under-18s application fell under a blanket ban imposed on all incoming and outgoing sport tours, which the SRC said was “in the interest of public health and safety”.
BUZ decided to abandon its mission after failing to get a response from the SRC last Friday.
“By end of business on Friday, the SRC had not responded to our application and we took the silence to mean our request for clearance has been turned down. Besides, even if we’re to get cleared now, something we doubt will happen, it’s logistically impossible to make the trip. Also, we don’t want to go for the sake of fulfilling the fixtures but to compete,” said BUZ president Joe Mujuru.
“As it is, we feel having not trained in over a month, we would have risked doing a disservice to ourselves, athletes and the country as we were going to pay dearly for failing to prepare.”
He said his organisation is unlikely to apply for permission to send the senior men’s and women’s teams to the Afro-Basket regional finals in Angola set for this month. — @ZililoR
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