Come on Eliah, we failed Eliah Zvimba
Eliah Zvimba

Eliah Zvimba

Elliah Zvimba
Zimbabwe Professional Cricketers Association Bulawayo

Re: Zimbabwe Cricket, ZPCA, World Cup, International Cricket Council

Dear Eliah

Your statement to a number of media organisations, in response to our coverage of Zimbabwe Cricket, Zimbabwe cricketers, the 2014 ICC World Twenty20 Cup, the World Cup bonuses and the ICC bailout refers.

An underlying tone of your statement was that we misled the public by saying that the Zimbabwe cricketers were on a World Cup gravy train in Bangladesh by getting US$412 000, for just three qualifying games in a doomed campaign, in earnings that were over and above their contractual payments.

In a rumbling that flirted on the edges of a man who leads an organisation in denial of the reality of the environment they work in, you accused us of allegedly damaging the images of national team cricketers by portraying them as unprofessional and greedy under-achievers who had let their country down.

You claimed I was insensitive to the players’ plight because, you claimed, I hadn’t lived through the ordeal of going for six months without being paid a salary and you said it was important that we understand that our players were the least paid international cricketers in the world.

I agree with you that the ZC leadership failed dismally when they failed to pay the players their salaries and any leadership of an organisation that fails to honour its pay commitments to its employees is falling far short of expectations.

But within that leadership are some good men who put their personal properties on the line, just to provide the security that was needed at the banks to get the multi-million loans that kept cricket going against a background of deprived earnings in the wake of the absence of income-generating box office tours, and it’s something that is acknowledged even in that ICC confidential report.

The point remains, dear Eliah, that eventually the payments were made to the players, backdated to that month when the payments stopped, and that’s a very different case to a group of employees who lost their income because their employer failed to pay them.

Where we differ, my dear Eliah, is for your organisation to then use that breach of contract, for which due compensation has been paid, as a hostile tool to hold cricket and its future at ransom by arm-twisting the ZC leadership to sign deals where they eventually pay outrageous World Cup bonuses that are clearly beyond their means.

You will note that it was the ICC, the very organisation that was bringing in the money in the form of loans that were drip-fed into the ZC’s coffers, who said the World Cup deal struck by your organisation and the country’s cricket leaders was one made in hell.

If the people who are providing the money, who are also supposed to be the international guardians of the game, express reservations for such a deal, I believe that it gives us the right, as the media, to scrutinise such a deal and, in the wake of such scrutiny, I believe we have a right to conclude that an organisation like yours is bordering on promoting a culture of mercenaries in the game.

Of course, it’s your job to get the best possible deal for your players, even against a background of milking the only cow in the kraal to the last drop and still hoping that, against all conventional wisdom, it will still produce enough milk to feed the entire country.

You are not employed to reason beyond the needs of your constituency and that is why you conveniently close your eyes, when we suffer the embarrassment of losing to Ireland and failing to qualify for the Super 10 at the World Cup because, in your choreographed world, such humiliation can be spun to represent “exceptional performance”.

The ICC confidential report says its proposed bailout package would inevitably raise eyebrows among other members like Afghanistan and Ireland who have “made significant ‘on field’ progress”, and can “raise valid concerns about the value of exposing the ICC to protect a Full Member whose current performances on the field are no better than a top Associate Member.”

You appear so selfish that you only care about what protects your interests and you blindly urge the ZC leadership to accept the ICC bailout package, and all its conditions, but when the same ICC says in the same report that your members have to revise their expectations because they “need to better understand the harsh realities of the state of the Zimbabwe economy and current financial position of ZC,” you reject their proposals.

You moan that your members are the least paid international cricketers but deliberately ignore the ICC when they say that the ZC should revise its costs to suit their size because, in reality, they are just as small as an English county or a South African province.

England, and its success, excites you but why not ask yourself how much we have lost, as a cricket nation, from hosting a box-office tour of the English, not one but four tours, had the politics that keep stalking this game not blown away such tours?

You tell us that England did well under a Zimbabwean coach and give this extremely wild suggestion that a lot of our cricketers are in flight mode, dumping their country of birth because of the challenges facing the game, and going to try their luck in England.

You conveniently forget that there is nothing new about this and that the same successful England you seemingly love so much, and take as the ultimate example, built its recent success on the foundation of a number of South Africans — Andrew Strauss, Kevin Pietersen, Matt Prior and Jonathan Trott.

Now, if the rich boys of Cricket South Africa can lose so many talented players to England, something that began a long time ago when Basil D’Oliveira went over in the ‘60s, why do you suddenly believe that the loss of a couple of local players to chance their luck in England is a reflection of maladministration of the game?

It’s a journey a lot of them seemingly travel.

It didn’t start yesterday, dear Eliah, Duncan Fletcher, who captained Zimbabwe at its maiden World Cup appearance in England in 1983, was gone the following year having decided to settle in South Africa and Graeme Hick felt his talents deserved the big stage of England.

You said you don’t know where I get my documents, suggesting someone was feeding me with information, possibly within the ZC, and I guess that’s your right and if I can give you that benefit I feel it’s only fair that you also allow me to say that you don’t strike me as the leader of your organisation.

Something tells me there is a huge constituency lurking in the shadows conducting your orchestra and all you do is to provide the voice and, more importantly, the face to sing their song.

Come on Eliah, whether you like it or not is irrelevant but belts will be tightened in domestic cricket, no doubt about that, costs will be revised dramatically, one franchise will be sacrificed and, hopefully, come the World Cup in New Zealand and Australia next year, we will do better than the gloom of Bangladesh.

And, next time you send out media statements, remember it’s called “nurturing talent”, and not “naturing talent”, as you indicated in your statement.

Regards,

Robson Sharuko

Senior Sports Editor

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