Sharuko on Saturday

AMID the turmoil and decay rampant in our football today, and a Sports Minister who appears to be either overwhelmed or confused by his portfolio, it’s refreshing that a small country like ours, of just about 14 million people, can still produce remarkable athletes who can compete at a World Cup.

Next week, our cricketers will take on mighty India, the World Champions, a country of a billion people, for whom cricket is more than just a game, but certainly a religion and Sachin Tendulkar a virtual saint.

It’s a measure of the massive impact that we have made on this game that the Indian head coach, tasked with defending the World Cup won four years ago, is a Zimbabwean, Duncan Fletcher, who was our skipper at our first appearance at this showcase in England in 1983.

He grew up on a farm in Zimbabwe and went to Prince Edward School before rising through the ranks to lead his country, at their first World Cup appearance, where they produced one of the greatest upsets of all-time by beating Australia.

That group of Zimbabwean cricketers should also have beaten eventual champions India, who found themselves against the ropes at 17-5, before Kapil Dev somehow produced an innings, considered the finest ODI knock ever, of sheer quality to score 175, to steer his team out of trouble.

Thirty-two years later, Fletcher finds himself here in Australia, with the scars of the wounds he inflicted on the Aussies in England yet to heal in some parts of this country, chasing another World Cup dream as coach of India.

When England needed a coach to end 18 miserable years of being dominated by bitter rivals Australia in the Ashes, they could only get such technical expertise from Zimbabwe and it was Fletcher who famously guided them to that triumph, amid an unprecedented outpouring of emotions around that country, with a 2-1 win in 2005.

Such was the huge impact that he made in England that by the time he left, and they needed another coach, it was inevitable that they would turn to another Zimbabwean, Andy Flower, and in 2009 the former Oriel Boys and Vainona High School student guided them to victory in the Ashes and they won the ICC World Twenty20 in the Caribbean in the same year.

Two years later, Flower’s men defended the Ashes with an impressive 3-1 win here in Australia and he was named Coach of the Year in the BBC Sports Personality awards, after having guided England to be ranked the number one Test playing team in the world.

In 2013, Flower and his men once again won the Ashes, hammering the Aussies 3-0 in England, and, in just over a dozen years, Zimbabwean coaches had gone to England and transformed the cricket team into the dominant Test side in the world.

Fletcher is not the only cricket expert from Zimbabwe at this World Cup, wearing the colours of an adopted nation, in what is certainly an acknowledgement by the globe that when it comes to this game, we the people of that small nation sandwiched between the Limpopo and Zambezi, really make a defining impact.

Heath Streak, another former Zimbabwe skipper whose academy in Bulawayo is meant to produce a generation of cricketers, is here in the colours of Bangladesh, as their bowling coach, and they stand a good chance of knocking out a sorry England and qualifying for the knock-out stages of this World Cup.

Grant Flower, who until recently was the Zimbabwe assistant coach, is wearing the colours of Pakistan, the last nation to win the World Cup when it was last held in this part of the globe in 1992, when the immortal Wasim Akram destroyed England in the final, as the Asian nation’s batting coach.

The English cricket team here even brought one of our boys, Gary Ballance, who played for us at the ICC Under-19 World Cup in 2006, and in only his second Test match for his adopted country, scored a century against Sri Lanka last year, batting at the pivotal number three role.

We even provide the sound-bite for those who are following the coverage of this World Cup on SuperSport, and that’s a huge part of Africa, who are now certainly familiar with Mphumelelo Mbangwa, the dominant voice when it comes to the transmission of the drama that has been unfolding here into their homes.

So, for all the trials and tribulations that our sport might be going through right now, highlighted, of course, by the madness that has become our football, a Sports Minister seemingly out of touch with the realities, let alone the challenges of his portfolio, and all the negativity that stalks it, remember we still have guys who can play at a World Cup.

Guys who can be trusted to lead the challenge of the defending champions in their quest to defend their World Cup crown, guys who can be banked upon to bring value to the technical set-up of a team like Pakistan and guys who can be expected by 150 million plus Bangladeshis, who know no other sport than cricket, to come and make a difference in their national team.

QUESTIONS THAT MINISTER LANGA MUST ANSWER

Our Sports Minister, Andrew Langa, appeared before the parliamentary portfolio committee on sport on Thursday and, incredibly, just two days before Zimbabwe plunge into a make-or-break World Cup tie against giant-killers Ireland in Hobart, Australia, today, he didn’t address the huge mission that our cricketers face.

Now, this is a team that is playing at the World Cup, among the 14 best nations in the world, and they need a win today to keep their dreams alive but our good Sports Minister didn’t feel it was important that their mission should dominate his discussions with our lawmakers even though, the original agenda, concerned football.

When we have our national football team, now being forced to play qualifiers for the 2015 Cosafa Cup, surely, one would expect the team’s spectacular fall into a punching bag on the continent, let alone the region, in the last five years, to be addressed by our Sports Minister.

But, when his date before the lawmakers also coincides with a huge assignment, where another national team is not only playing at the World Cup, but faces a do-or-die assignment to keep its dreams alive, one would have expected he also talks about these boys.

Just imagine the impact that his rallying call, to fly the national flag higher, would have made on the boys who are here Down Under, ahead of today’s massive battle, and the inspiration they would have driven from the fact that their Minister, in the hallowed halls of parliament, had just told them that their nation was fully behind them?

Or just imagine how our injured skipper Elton Chigumbura, who is out of today’s tie, would have felt just to hear his Minister telling parliamentarians that, despite the injury he suffered in the service for his country against Pakistan, the government remains fully behind him and his boys?

When Ireland beat the United Arab Emirates by two wickets here, congratulations for them on Twitter, including from politicians like Northern Ireland Deputy Prime Minister Martin McGuiness, ensured that the Irish cricketers overshadowed Luis Suarez and Barcelona’s impressive show against Manchester City, as the top trending topics on the country’s social media network.

But all that we have heard from our Sports Minister, just two days before the Chevrons take on the Irish fighting for their World Cup life, was just this deafening silence even against the background that he was given a big stage for him to address our lawmakers on Thursday.

Instead, Langa dedicated the bulk of his address to discuss the crisis at ZIFA and, as usual, he played the role of Advocate, in defence of the association’s leadership, a line that he has towed vigorously for some time now.

I have always been in agreement with the Minister that the solution to our football crisis doesn’t necessarily lie with the drastic action of the Government dissolving the ZIFA board, because of the consequences that will follow, which will see innocent parties like FC Platinum being turned into victims of FIFA’s wrath.

I’m in agreement with Langa that it would be more beneficial, and less counter-productive, if ZIFA is helped, rather than be dissolved, but one would expect the Minister to be critical, at least, in public and among lawmakers, of the way this organisation is being run down so that its leadership realises that someone, who holds them accountable, is watching.

Instead, what we hear from the Minister is the same song, which appears to be supportive of the current football leadership, even in the week when a huge investment, like the artificial surface donated by FIFA for football development in our country, was auctioned and is now in the hands of some private owners.

The Minister’s rigid stance, where he can’t even blame a ZIFA chief executive who sat on a US$10 000 compensation claim until it ballooned to more than US$100 000, which resulted in the loss of the artificial surface, appears to fuel the belief, among some of his critics, that his name was among those whose entire 2014 World Cup package was paid for by ZIFA, something which he disputes.

But does Langa feel it was important for him to attend the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil, where our Warriors were not in action, even if we give him the benefit of doubt that his trip was not sponsored by ZIFA, and not make arrangements for him to travel to Australia and New Zealand, where his ministry, in particular, and the country, in general, is being represented by a national team playing at the World Cup?

The Minister wasn’t there when the national cricket team, en-route to this World Cup, held its reception in Harare, he wasn’t there when they went to Town House to bid farewell to their fans and he wasn’t there when they left Harare International Airport on a journey to compete against the best that the globe can throw at them.

On Thursday in Parliament, when he stood before lawmakers, he didn’t even mention them, even though they have a make-or-break assignment today, and it’s on days like these that some people question whether he is a Minister in Defence of ZIFA or, rather, the Minister of Sport who is supposed to serve all constituencies.

It’s easy to understand why the values of the Minister’s rigid stance, in not tempting FIFA by dissolving ZIFA, are lost in the haze of questions of his impartiality, when dealing with the sensitivity of this case, and fuels conspiracy theories that our football leadership became untouchables the moment they took him to Brazil last year.

Otherwise, the good Minister would have been telling parliament that ZIFA have a horrible secretariat, which needs an overhaul, especially at the top, where the chief executive sat on a US$10 000 claim until it became US$100 000 and cost us the artificial turf.

There are no FIFA sanctions for dealing with a ZIFA chief executive who is failing in the discharge of his duties, Cde Minister.

AT LEAST, LANGA WAS RIGHT THAT VIOLENCE MUST COME TO AN END

The violence at our stadiums, especially Barbourfields, is spiralling out of control and it was refreshing to hear the Minister say that Highlanders have to do more to bring those villains, who are not only tarnishing the club’s image but are also inflicting harm on others, to book so that this cancer, where it’s now fashionable for mayhem to engulf the stadium, is treated as quickly as could be possible.

Those Bosso hooligans, who have perfected the art of turning themselves into thugs who specialise in inflicting harm on opposition fans, every time the team loses a big match at Barbourfields, should be identified and weeded out of a proud institution whose reputation is being soiled by the action of a few and militant individuals.

It would be a betrayal of the truth if we were to say that this cancer is only restricted among those militias, who come to the stadium in the colours of Bosso, because such incidents have happened at many of our stadiums, but there is no doubt that the worst cases have been seen at Barbourfields in recent years.

To suggest that Highlanders is a violent club would be unfair on thousands of other fans of this club, who are in the majority, who just come to cheer their team and, when things don’t go according to plan, simply walk away to drown their sorrows elsewhere, accepting that in this game, losing is a big part of the possibilities.

Some sections of our media haven’t helped the situation, by trying to find an alibi every time to justify the madness of these few lunatics, rather than condemn them for representing an ugly part of our football that should not be tolerated.

To try and use Rodreck Mutuma as a scapegoat for triggering the violence on Sunday, on the basis that his celebrations appeared to taunt the opponents’ fans, would be a futile attempt to run away from the real problem because we saw such violent incidents long before this guy had left Mvuma to try his luck in the big city.

The good thing is that some sober voices like Ezra “Tshisa” Sibanda have refused to buy this cheap excuse and bravely confronted those who are soiling the image of their favourite team because the maniacs are in the minority and are not fully representative of the values of this beautiful football institution.

Even the administrators of the Bosso Live Facebook page this week felt that it was time to take on those monsters who are rubbishing the name of their proud club.

“Authorities MUST identify & come down hard on these lowlife hooligans masquerading as supporters out to soil the good name that Bosso has painstakingly built over the years,” they said on their page.

Refreshingly, even the administrators of the DeMbare Dotcom Facebook page have chosen to say that this cancer should be confronted in a way where those who are the good fans at Bosso, and they are the ones in the majority, should not be blamed for the actions of a few crazy lunatics.

Their tone yesterday was a call for everyone to play his/her part, in ensuring that we make our stadiums safe places once again, and I found it to be refreshing in a week when some pages, on social media, were inflaming the situation by describing this club as Bosso Haram or the Isis of Zimbabwe football.

It’s tragic that the unregulated platforms of social media, when left in the hands of those who believe that their camouflage gives them the freedom to incite hatred, whether tribal or otherwise, can only worsen an explosive situation and describing Highlanders as Bosso Haram or Isis won’t make our stadiums safe.

At least, and I have to give it to the Minister on this one, he was right that the Bosso leadership should take the bull by its horns and confront those who are soiling the image of a proud institution that, like West Ham, is more than a football club.

To God Be The Glory!

Come on Chevrons!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Chataraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

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Like my Facebook page, ROBSON SHARUKO JOURNALIST, follow me on Twitter @Chakariboy, interact with me on Viber and on ZBC’s weekly television football magazine programme, GamePlan on Monday nights, or read my material in The Southern Times.

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