Zimpapers Logo

IN about three weeks’ time, Zimbabwe will host nine other countries in the biggest cricket festival to be hosted on our soil since we staged our group matches, during the ICC Cricket World Cup 2003, 15 years ago.

The Chevrons will be the 10th team at that cricket showcase, which will start on March 4 and end on March 25, where the battle will be for the two tickets available for a place at next year’s ICC Cricket World Cup in England and Wales.

The West Indies, two-time winners of the ICC Cricket World Cup, are coming to town and have already named their 15-man squad and so have Afghanistan, whose game has been improving in leaps and bounds, with the two nations the early favourites to grab those two tickets.

However, with so much at stake, and with the Chevrons having the advantage of home conditions, which are very important when it comes to this game, anything can happen and in limited overs cricket, even the likes of Ireland cannot be dismissed as just coming to make up the numbers.

After all, the Irish beat the Windies and the Chevrons at the last ICC Cricket World Cup in Australia and New Zealand and, after naming their 15-man squad, which has a number of those players who served them with distinction Down Under, they can only be underrated at the peril of the opposition.

The Netherlands, Papua New Guinea, Hong Kong and Scotland will also be part of the show, including two qualifiers, given that there are teams coming from all over the world, this is set to be a huge cricket festival with matches set for Bulawayo, Harare and Kwekwe.

England, Australia, Bangladesh, India, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and South Africa have already qualified for the ICC Cricket World Cup 2019 in England and with only 10 teams set for the showcase this time around, the others have to qualify.

It’s refreshing that, in the new political dispensation, we will be given another grand opportunity to show the world that things have changed, in a big way, in this country and we are a nation on the move.

Having nine other nations in our backyard, which comes with all the media scrutiny and a World Cup ticket on offer, is huge and we have to make sure that we stage a tournament that will make the entire globe appreciate that we have, indeed, turned the corner.

We are just concerned, though, that despite the size of this tournament and the opportunity that it provides for our nation, the cricket leaders in this country — and their partners — appear to have chosen to go into silent mode instead of making a whole lot of noise about the imminent arrival of this showcase.

For those who are not cricket fans, in this country, they can be forgiven if they tell you they don’t know that we are going to host such a huge global cricket part on our soil in just a few weeks’ time.

Whoever was tasked with promoting this tournament, which needs the patronage of the local fans for it to become a success story with stadiums full of partying supporters, is certainly not doing a good job in spreading the message.

A few years ago, there would have been a lot of brutal negative headlines and articles around the world castigating the ICC for daring to bring this big tournament to Zimbabwe with a lot of politics being splashed into the dish to make us look very bad.

There would have been questions being sent to the British government about the participation of Scotland and Ireland in this tournament and a number of parliamentarians in that country would be raising issues about these countries coming here. But, with the British government now sending top envoys for engagement with our new political leadership, things have changed dramatically on that front.

Therefore, the onus is now on us to ensure that we stage a very successful tournament and crucially, our Chevrons have to try and win one of the two tickets available for a place at the next World Cup because this comes with a lot of financial rewards which are crucial in the long-term development of our game.

Sadly, the Chevrons are not doing very well right now and their showing yesterday, when they slumped to a big defeat in the first ODI against Afghanistan after being bowled out for just 179, while chasing 334 for victory, isn’t the kind of performance that can take us to the next World Cup.

We have to start looking ourselves in the mirror and, in the remaining period, try to make the changes to the team to ensure that, when we host the qualifiers, we will have a side that can flex its muscles at home and qualify for the World Cup.