1000 Words on Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe Cricket is going through changes...
Super 12 debutants. It's weird when you think about it. Zimbabwe was playing Test cricket before Afghanistan and Bangladesh. They were at the 1992 World Cup. And yet, they had never played in the Super 12 stage of a T20 World Cup.
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In May last year, Ryan Burl was in a hole. Well, his foot was in a hole and the Zimbabwe allrounder had reached a breaking point, so he approached the Twitterverse for help. It was a bold move, you don’t often see cricketers from Test-playing nations begging for equipment on social media.
Burl’s case was not unique. A number of Zimbabwean players were also in the same position, but Burl was the only one with the guts to come out in the open and speak about it. There were murmurs that Burl could get into trouble with Zimbabwe Cricket for his begging bowl tweets. There were whispers of board members who felt Burl had gone out of his way to embarrass the ZC board.
Fortunately, nothing happened to Burl.
A lot has changed since then.
After matches, Burl no longer has to use glue and a vice clamp to hold his shoes together. Puma came through for him. They also came through for the rest of the Zimbabwe Cricket men’s national team; they were all wearing red and yellow Puma spikes as they made history. This is the first time Zimbabwe has qualified for the Super 12 stage at a T20 World Cup.
Ryan Burl’s shoes were not the only thing that was falling apart last year.
In 2021, Zimbabwe made a habit of losing. They lost at home and lost away. Zimbabwe didn’t start losing in 2021, they had been losing for a while and they lost more than cricket matches. They also lost players to county cricket and New Zealand. They lost one of their best players (Brandon Taylor) and one of their legends (Heath Streak) to match-fixing.
But, in 2021 their losing on the field got worse. In 2021, Zimbabwe played nine T20Is; they lost eight and won only one. In early 2022, they kept up their losing streak. Namibia beat them three games to two in a five-match series. The consensus was that the coach was the problem.
Lachland Rajput was not popular with the fans. He was also not popular with the players (I am told). He wanted to move on from them. Sikandar Raza, Craig Ervine, Sean Williams... he felt those guys and a few others were over the hill. After his sacking from his post as head coach Rajput was promoted to technical director. Curious, yes.
Anyway, it did not help matters that the former Zimbabwe head coach was also moonlighting as an IPL commentator when he should have been with the Zimbabwe men’s national team. He was accused of cellphone coaching.
In the early 2000s, the land reform program happened in Zimbabwe. Land reform program is a nice term, sounds organised. In Zimbabwe, it was the opposite. There was chaos. People with money and political influence managed to get their hands on prime land. But, most of them had careers in the cities and knew nothing about farming.
Those people did not spend a lot of time at their farms, only visiting here and there, sometimes to show off the land they owned to relatives or friends. And they insisted on running the day-to-day operations of the farm from their urban headquarters. They were absentee landlords who directed farming operations on their cellphones.
Calling Lachland Rajput a cellphone coach implied that he was not present a lot of the time.
A lot has changed since then.
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Zimbabwe now has Dave Houghton, a coach who understands Zimbabwe much better than Rajput. Houghton captained Zimbabwe in 1992 and 1993. He also coached Zimbabwe during the late 1990s. First as a player-coach, then as a head coach. That stint did not end well. Zimbabwe Cricket says they pushed him out. Houghton says he knew his time was up when only one player, Andy Flower, did as he asked. There was a ‘mutiny’, he had lost the dressing room.
A lot has changed since then. Houghton is no longer coaching former teammates. His charges do not look at him as a peer but as a father figure. After more than 20 years of coaching, Houghton now commands respect.
If Rajput’s team behaved like deer caught in headlights, Houghton has instilled a sense of self-belief into this Zimbabwe team.
If the qualifiers for this year’s T20 World Cup had been held in 2021, Zimbabwe players would have partied hard the evening after they qualified for the showpiece. In July 2022, under Dave Houghton, they did not celebrate. They cheered and made the appropriate noises for the cameras, but in their own space, they were subdued and went to bed early that night.
Dave Houghton and his team had gone into the qualifiers to do one job: win all their matches. They partied after winning the final. Zimball, Davball, whatever Bazball-inspired term you want to use to explain the new attitude, it’s working. They now hold themselves to a higher standard.
Before the 2014 and 2016 T20 World Cups, Zimbabwe’s national team players went on strike over unpaid salaries. Stories of administrators diverting funds for personal use, making profits off the money, before it found its way to the players swirled in the air. They had a delinquent board and the players underperformed at both tournaments.
Many Zimbabwe players have never really had sponsorship deals. Only a handful, the Sikandar Razas of Zimbabwe cricket had them. Many relied on national team salaries.
“It’s difficult for players to focus on playing the game when you are worried about whether your family has eaten or not,” I have been told over and over again by those close to the situation.
A lot has changed since then.
The team was paid in advance coming into this world cup, two weeks in advance. They were also paid in advance before Zimbabwe’s ODI tour to Australia. This year's world cup is also one of those rare moments where they are at a major tournament without any off-field drama following them around.
A lot has changed and there is more change still happening. How long that positive change will last is a question for another day. What matters is that there is change. Zimbabweans in Australia and New Zealand also feel that change and travelled long distances to cheer the team on. Shona chants of popular songs normally sung at soccer matches drowned everyone else in Hobart.
Many of the fans present are not even cricket fans. There was a time when fans couldn’t be bothered to watch Zimbabwe play. A lot has changed since then.