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THE Zimbabwe national cricket team has been disappointing their loyal fans for quite some time now with a number of below par performances on the international scene.

This has resulted in many fans, who used to pack Harare Sports Club during the hey-day of the Chevrons, voting with their feet by deciding to stay away from the ground whenever the team is hosting an international match.

There was a time when we could all derive a lot of national pride from the achievements of the Chevrons and the fact that we are one of the few countries deemed to be competitive enough to play Test cricket in the world was a source of bragging rights for millions of people in this country.

But, sadly, those days have since drifted away and the Chevrons have become a punching bag for their rivals and not even playing at home appears to give them the strength to punch, at times above their weight, as was the case in the good old days.

We have watched the same players, some who have been playing for the team for more than a dozen years now, continue to be fielded even though it’s clear that time has finally caught up with many of them and they are no longer as athletic as they used to be in their prime.

And these old warhorses have done nothing to justify the confidence that the selectors seem to have in them, always coming short when much is expected from them, but surprisingly, they still get the nod to play another game and against another team.

Mediocrity has become very acceptable in the Chevrons camp and we get the feeling the players have long forgotten that when they step onto that field, they are representing more than 14 million Zimbabweans.

When changes were effected to the team, with former star Tatenda Taibu, coming back as the selectors chief, we believed that the days when many of the players will only be guaranteed their place in the team, simply because they have been there in the past, would come to an end.

After all, we knew Taibu as a player who always tried to find perfection, who never accepted mediocrity and who worked very hard to turn himself, first, into a teenage star and then into a captain of the Chevrons.

Taibu talked tough, when he got the job, promising the changes that we have been crying out for and saying that the days when the Chevrons would be a punching bag for all and sundry were gone and a new, fitter, competitive and better team will now fly our flag.

Sadly, we have seen little to suggest Taibu is on the right track and that he spends a lot of his time in England, where his family is based, appears to limit what he can do, in terms of turning around the fortunes of our Chevrons.

And, it’s something that we find unacceptable.

The arrival of Heath Streak, the former captain who impressed during his coaching stint with Bangladesh, as the national team coach, an appointment that we backed as a newspaper, also gave us the promise that things were going to change for the better.

While, admittedly, Streak needs to be given time to find ways of turning around the fortunes of the team, we are not happy that the same old faces, who have become symbols of failure when it comes to our Chevrons, continue to be preferred when the team is selected for international assignments.

We believe our lowest point, in what has been a painful time for us, came when Afghanistan eliminated us from the World Cup in India last year.

We have always believed that we are better than Afghanistan and it’s good that the Asians are now here for a five-match ODI series and we feel the time has come for us to flex our muscles and justify why we should continue believing we are better than them.

It’s refreshing that Solomon Mire, the all-rounder who impressed when we played at the World Cup in Australia and New Zealand, has decided to leave his adopted home Down Under to commit himself to the Chevrons.

We can’t keep some of our best players and hope to continue to be competitive and we welcome his decision to come home and play international cricket again.

He should lead by example and show that, indeed, he has learned a lot during his time away from home, playing competitively in Australia, and help us beat these plucky Afghans in this series that begins next week.

Our A-side suffered a 1-4 crushing defeat to these Asians and the Chevrons can’t suffer the same fate because, if that happens, then we would have to accept that, indeed, we are now staggering in the darkness.