Sikandar Raza is what success looks like

“If I stay alive how am I going to manage with just one arm? Because if there was cancer in my bone marrow the only option was amputation.” – Sikandar Raza

Telford Vice / Cape Town

JUNE 27 this year, a random not long ago Tuesday that feels an age away, wasn’t special in the annals of Zimbabwean cricket. What mattered was what had gone before and what would happen in the coming days.

The men’s national team had beaten Nepal, the Netherlands and the United States, while losing to West Indies, in the World Cup qualifiers. They would play Oman two days later and surely win. Another victory over Sri Lanka or Scotland and a berth in the white-ball game’s premier international tournament would be theirs. Whatever could go wrong? 

Zimbabwe beat Oman but lost to the clinical Lankans and the up-and-coming Scots. There will be no World Cup for them in 2023, just like there wasn’t in 2019. That was not yet true on June 27, which now gleams as a Brigadoonian bubble, a cruelly liminal place where enough was going right to make people believe it would keep going right. It was a time of hope and dreams, and for introductory paragraphs like this:     

If you see Sikandar Raza on a cricket ground, stop what you’re doing. Whether he is launching sixes down the ground, snaffling wickets with his aggressive off-spin, or clutching catches close to the bat and fielding fabulously in the deep, he is worth watching. Few players make for such consistently compelling viewing.

That was written a day or so after Raza had availed himself for an interview. He was in Bulawayo, where Zimbabwe’s campaign had moved after starting at Harare Sports Club. The questions were asked from Harare, where attempts to talk to him face-to-face had failed. “In Harare I just wanted to spend some time with the kids, do the fatherly duties, forget about who I am and what’s expected, just totally disconnect,” he explained needlessly.

Seven days later, as Raza peered bleakly out of the players’ balcony at Queens Sports Club in the aftermath of the loss to Scotland, his eyes dark with dashed dreams, his face ashen with the difference between what might have been and what was, he wouldn’t have been human if he wasn’t silently screaming to again “forget about who I am and what’s expected”. 

Raza is 37, as is Craig Ervine. Sean Williams is a year behind. Nyasha Mayavo, Innocent Kaia and Tendai Chatara have all passed 30. Some of them should make it to the 2027 World Cup, which Zimbabwe won’t need to qualify for as they will co-host the tournament with South Africa and Namibia. Others won’t be there. Raza’s face as he sat there was of a man who knew which side of that line he was on. 

That, convention says, is what failure looks like. Success is winning, and doubtless the Zimbabweans would have looked and behaved differently had they won. But what does that mean when David Houghton has built perhaps a better team than any who have worn the Hungwe? And when they are supported in droves by Zimbabweans who, previously, might not have thought of cricket as a game for them? How is that not success?

“I don’t want to take anything away from the golden generation that put Zimbabwe on the map,” Raza said. “People still talk about them, and I’m not saying people must forget about them. They deserve our respect, but our names must be mentioned long after we’re gone. That’s what this generation is focused on. Luckily we’ve got Dave. He said the other day that this is the best Zimbabwean side that he’s seen and coached.”

They have been polished by experience, which tends to happen once you reach 30. “That’s very important, but the other factor would have to be Craig. Not just as a captain but as a friend, a leader and as a calming source of energy for us. In pressured moments he remains calm and clear-headed, and that helps.”

The maestro is Houghton. “We’re not worried for our spots, we’re not worried about selection, we’re not worried that this might be our last game. Dave has brought that surety, that knowledge that you are here. He backs us behind the scenes, he fights for us. We’ve had a pretty stable squad for the last seven or eight series. Guys are sure about their roles and their selection, and when we go out there the thought that ‘I might have a bad day’ doesn’t cross our mind. It’s about, ‘I’m going to have a good day and I’m going to score as many as I can for my team.’”

The sunshine has shone on other facets of what it takes to create a united, happy dressing room. “We have little spaces available in the changing room where I go and pray,” Raza, a practising Muslim, said. “My teammates, in case I forget, are very quick to remind me that it’s time for my prayers. Or they ask if I’ve prayed yet. These are little things that go a long way. Once you have your teammates talking like that you want to go to war with them because they respect you and your faith.

“Under Dave and Craig, a lot of these things came about automatically. We didn’t have to convince anybody. Everybody respects the fact that we have three different races in one changing room, which means three to four religions in one changing room. You bring your faith, your culture, your own identity. And we’re going to use that towards our success. It’s brought everybody together.”

Raza’s faith was key to his emergence from the cause of mounting pain in his right arm, which hampered his bowling during a Test series against Afghanistan in Abu Dhabi in March 2021. Cancer was suspected but a biopsy revealed infected bone marrow. Had he feared for his life?

“Yes, and the second thing was, ‘If I stay alive how am I going to manage with just one arm?’ Because if there was cancer in my bone marrow the only option was amputation. A lot of thoughts went through my mind. Those weeks were very tough.”

He returned, after almost four months, with a remodelled bowling action, which made onlookers think of another spinner — instead of cocking his bowling arm as he skipped towards the stumps, Raza kept his hand and the ball behind his back until he reached the crease.

“Before my surgery I was at the CPL and with Sunil Narine, and I was watching him. After my surgery I could not bowl with my own action. My arm couldn’t go above my shoulder. I said that’s it, I’m bowling with this action. I don’t care whether people like it or not.”

Other players might have given up bowling. Faf du Plessis, for instance, was a handy leg spinner. But he hasn’t marked out a run-up since March 2015 because of a chronic shoulder problem. Not bowling wasn’t an option for Raza: “I don’t want to play for Zimbabwe just as a batter. I don’t think Dave and Craig would have picked me as a batter alone.”

That’s difficult to believe. No Zimbabwe player has scored as many runs as Raza, across the formats, in the past two years: 1,881 with four centuries and nine 50s in 51 innings. Closer to the truth, probably, is that he can’t bear not being at the nexus of the action. Was there a way to keep him out of the game?

“If you’re the captain and you don’t want to give the ball,” Raza said with a smile in his voice. “I have to fight him every game … nah. It’s nice to be an allrounder and stay in the thick of things, and try do a job for the team in different roles.” Later in the conversation he elucidated his joke: “It’s just a shame I have very bad company, but the rest is going pretty well. I’ve got Craig Ervine sitting in front of me.”                 

That kind of attitude requires belief. Where does Raza get his? “From my faith and my training. I do my prayers before the game and I’m at peace, whatever the result we might get. That calms me down. The fact that we train well together as a team and everybody’s clear, that also where the confidence comes from. Franchise tournaments have helped as well. These things all add up.”

Aside from starring for Zimbabwe, Raza has featured in the IPL, BPL, CPL, PSL and the LPL. He’s walked a long and winding road since being born in Sialkot in April 1986, a path that has included moving, with his family, to Zimbabwe in 2002. What was it like going to a starkly different reality?

“All I was coming to do was to be with my father. He was in Japan for most of his life for business. We used to see him once every three years. So I didn’t care about the place. It was about being with my family in one place. Nothing else mattered.”

Having been to school in Pakistan and studied software engineering in Scotland, it helped that he was in perhaps the most accepting society in the world: “Settling in wasn’t tough. Everywhere I went people welcomed me. I’m loved as a Zimbabwean. I’m theirs and they are mine. I’ve never felt like a guy who wasn’t born here. It was easy, comfortable and quick. Cricket brought me closer to the people, the country, the community and everything else.” Close enough for him to stay in Zimbabwe after he retires? “Yes. But I’ll disappear for some time, take a break.”

On June 27 those words landed warmly. Now they brim with portents. Raza’s retirement won’t resemble that of Stuart Broad, another 37-year-old who is set to exchange stardom on the field for a well-paid commentary career. Unlike Broad, Raza will need a proper job. Happily, given the rich and varied experiences of his life, he could land a proper job. And, with faith, succeed in that, too.

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Anyone for Test cricket? Depends who you ask …

“Absolutely not. Five days in the dirt with a red ball? That would be pretty tough.” – Max O’Dowd

Telford Vice / Cape Town

WOULD you want to play Test cricket? Note the fine print: not could you or did you or are you or will you. Even if money, opportunity, skill and talent were no object, would you want to? The answer seems obvious, particularly among a certain cohort.

For them Test cricket is inviolate; the purest, most viscerally satisfying form of the game for players and followers alike. Who among the properly cricketminded would not want to play it?

The question rings particularly rhetorical in the throes of a febrile Ashes series and as India regroup in the Caribbean in the wake of losing the WTC final in June. Seeing the Big Three in whites simultaneously surely tilts the balance further towards the obvious answer. But, as with so much else, it depends who you ask.

Would Max O’Dowd want to play Test cricket? “Absolutely not. I mean, I love Test cricket. It’s great. But five days in the dirt with a red ball? That would be pretty tough. I’m quite happy playing white-ball cricket.” 

How about his fellow New Zealand-born Dutch international, Logan van Beek? “I love Test cricket, and I love playing red-ball cricket — the feeling of bowling a seven or eight-over spell, and coming back after lunch and bowling another seven or eight-over spell; that battle between bat and ball and finding a way to get someone out.

“The satisfaction you get from winning a four-day game or a Test match, you can’t beat that feeling. You’re exhausted. You’ve given everything you can possibly give. Mentally you’re cooked. You’ve had nights of turmoil as the game ebbed and flowed. So, yes, a dream of mine is to play Test cricket.”

That dream has been realised by 3,247 men, 1,365 of whom made their Test debuts before January 5, 1971 — the day that heralded the beginning of the end of the game as we knew it, or the start of the wonderful spectacle cricket has grown into. Which is it? Again, it depends who you ask. 

January 5, 1971 was the day Australia and England were at the MCG to play the first ODI.

More than 52 years and 4,793 more ODIs later, 2,135 T20Is — as of Thursday — have also been played, the first of them contested by New Zealand and Australia at Eden Park on February 17, 2005. Tests? Including the first, between Australia and England at the MCG in March 1877, and the current match in Dominica, 2,510 have and are being played. That’s an average of 17.19 Tests a year versus 92.19 ODIs and 118.61 T20Is.

Women have played just 145 Tests, or 5.78% of the male total. That’s why this analysis is focusing on the men’s game — to provide reasonable grounds for comparison. All told 6,524 places have been filled in teams playing men’s international cricket. Of those spots 1,535 have been taken by those who have featured in Tests only, 624 by ODI specialists and 2,100 by T20I purists. But since January 5, 1971 just 282 have been strictly Test players — 45.19% and 13.43% of the number of their ODI and T20I counterparts. Seven teams played Tests before the ODI era and 13, including ICC XIs, have thereafter. Twenty-nine sides have taken the field in ODIs and 100 in T20Is. Cricket’s direction of travel? It doesn’t depend on who you ask: the future is firmly, utterly, squarely skewed in favour of the white-ball game.

Moreover, as O’Dowd said, “It looks like full-member status sometimes can make life tougher for you.” Besides being expensive to host, Tests could take a team’s eye off the white ball. Having beaten Scotland, West Indies and England at the T20 World Cup in Australia last year, Ireland had reason to be bullish about securing one of the two ODI World Cup berths available at the qualifiers in Zimbabwe in the past few weeks. Or at least about reaching the Super Sixes. But they lost to Oman, the Scots and Sri Lanka — before beating the United Arab Emirates, the United States and Nepal — and went home after the group stage. That cost them the USD1-million they would have earned for reaching the World Cup. 

The Irish went to the qualifiers directly from being hammered inside three days by England at Lord’s in June. In April they lost to Bangladesh in Mirpur and twice by an innings to Sri Lanka in Galle. Test cricket, as van Beek said, takes more out of players and teams than the white-ball game — more so if they aren’t accustomed to navigating the rigours and demands that come with playing for days at a time, which many international sides do not do domestically.

How are Ireland supposed to improve as a red-ball side considering they, like Afghanistan, have played just seven Tests each since both were elevated in June 2017? If teams don’t have to bother with Tests their white-ball form cannot suffer. The Dutch beat Zimbabwe and West Indies in the qualifiers and nailed down a berth at this year’s World Cup. How much of the Zimbabweans’ and West Indians’ failure to qualify can be ascribed to Test cricket getting in the way of their plans and preparations to play in global tournaments? Those formats are, financially and in realistic terms, the most important to them. And they don’t require what sides like the Dutch don’t have: decades of residual experience hard-wired into their game and their psyche by playing first-class cricket.

The Netherlands have featured in 34 first-class matches, all in the defunct Inter-Continental Cup from June 2004 to December 2017. O’Dowd played in five of them, his only caps in the format, scoring two centuries in nine innings. In his and the Dutch’s last game, against Namibia in Dubai in December 2017, he made 126 and took 1/6 and 2/26 in 15 overs of off-spin.

That sounds like reason to be hopeful for a first-class career, but O’Dowd was “quite happy where we are, as long as we keep competing and upsetting some of the big guys”. Like the Netherlands did by beating South Africa at the T20 World Cup — a result that shocked the world, but not the Dutch.

“It didn’t feel surreal,” O’Dowd said. “It didn’t feel like it was an amazing miracle. I felt like we just played really good cricket. South Africa weren’t terrible. In the past we’ve won games where we’ve been exceptional and the opposition’s been pretty poor, and that’s how we’ve been able to win. In that game I felt like we did what we do well, and South Africa didn’t play as well as they should have. And we won. It was just like any other game where a team beats the other team. It felt good but it wasn’t anything crazy. It was just good cricket — everyone doing what they had to do, taking our catches, everyone chipping in, no amazing performances. It was a good team effort.”

van Beek’s view is different. Maybe it’s in the genes. O’Dowd’s father, Alex O’Dowd, played 17 first-class matches for Auckland and Northern Districts. But that pales next to van Beek’s pedigree. His grandfather, Sammy Guillen, played five Tests for West Indies and three for New Zealand — whose first victory he clinched at Eden Park in March 1956 by stumping the Windies’ Alf Valentine. That done, he retired immediately. Valmai Berg, Guillen’s wife and van Beek’s grandmother, featured in eight first-class games for Canterbury. van Beek’s great grandfather and great uncle also earned first-class caps.

So van Beek’s path to Test cricket is possible, even plottable. He has played 28 matches for Canterbury and 27 for Wellington among his 70 first-class appearances, in which he has scored a century and taken eight five-wicket and two 10-wicket hauls. Most recently, for New Zealand A against their Australia equivalents in Lincoln in April, he took 4/72 and 3/61 and hit six fours in a 40-ball 39.  

But there’s a catch. “If I manage to keep playing good cricket and New Zealand say they want to pick me for the Test team, there would be an opportunity cost,” van Beek said. “Because then all the Dutch stuff goes out the window. And it’s hard at the moment to deny the fact that what we’re doing is special. To be a part of it is amazing. There’s the World Cup in India and the T20 World Cup in West Indies [and the US] next year, where the connection is special. Those two events are going to be hard to turn down, but if I manage to make an impact in New Zealand it’s something I would have to seriously consider.”   

Would van Beek want to play Test cricket, all things considered? The answer is obvious but it isn’t simple. Sometimes it doesn’t depend solely on who you ask. It’s also about who you are. Because people, not cricketers, play cricket.

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Winning or losing means little in final that decides nothing

“This is a call out to anyone who wants to play us. We’d love to have a fixture or two.” – Ryan Cook, Netherlands coach, on his team’s looming downtime.

Telford Vice / Harare Sports Club

NEITHER a bang nor a whimper accompanied the end of the men’s World Cup qualifiers ended at Harare Sports Club (HSC) on Sunday. Instead the final was a strange dance; a two-step of torpor and twitchiness conducted by teams on different trajectories towards a common goal. 

Dasun Shanaka and Scott Edwards appeared with the trophy on the outfield on Saturday for the obligatory photo shoot, and greeted each other with the hearty handshakes and hugs of brothers. Perhaps the clearly warm words they exchanged concerned the fact that the decider was not a decider. By virtue of reaching the final, both teams will go to the World Cup in India in October and November.

That made Sunday’s match irrelevant. Even so, the Netherlands brought to it the same preppy energy that has propelled them throughout the tournament. They have had so much fun proving their point — that they belong at the global showpiece — that they were enthusiastic to prove it again. Sri Lanka, World Cup champions in 1996, skulked around the ground projecting a faint air of either embarrassment that they should have to put up with qualifying in the first place, or boredom with being there having done the job they came to do.

How had the realisation that they would have to qualify land with the Sri Lankans? “It was uncomfortable,” Chris Silverwood said. “It was a responsibility that we took very heavily. We knew we had to come here and perform. It’s tricky when you come to these places. One of the things that has been really pleasing for me is that every time we have been asked a question, we’ve managed to find solutions. That’s a sign of a good developing team, which is what we have here.”

The difference in the teams’ approach was captured across seven balls deep in the doldrums of the Lankan innings, each episode starring the irrepressible Logan van Beek. Sahan Arachchige reverse swept the first of those deliveries, bowled by Saqib Zulfiqar, into van Beek’s hands as he dived at a shortish backward point. Two balls later Charith Asalanka bunted Zulfiqar to midwicket and set off on a single that was never there. van Beek hustled to the ball and bustled his throw, which glanced the stumps with Asalanka millimetres from safety. Four balls after that Shanaka lazily dinked van Beek to mid-on, where Vikramjit Singh took a simple catch.

That took the Lankans from 180/3 to 183/6, and shrunk a total that had looked bound for at least 350 to 233. But, unlike teams like West Indies and South Africa, Sri Lanka do not often beat themselves. So it didn’t matter that their opponents were the most plucky, enterprising, ambitious team at the qualifiers. Objectively, the Lankans are a better side than the Dutch. Good luck telling the Dutch that.

They prevailed over the United States, Nepal, West Indies, Oman and Scotland — and lost to Zimbabwe and Sri Lanka — to reach the final. But Sri Lanka swept all before them: the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Ireland, Scotland, the Netherlands, Zimbabwe and West Indies. In the Super Six game between the finalists in Bulawayo two Fridays ago, the Lankans were dismissed for 20 fewer runs than on Sunday and still won by 21.

The matchwinning performers then were Dhananjaya da Silva, who took guard at 34/4 and was ninth out for 93, and Maheesh Theekshana, who dismissed Bas de Leede, Zulfiqar and van Beek in the space of seven of his deliveries. On Sunday, in the absence of a compelling batting remedy, the winning was done by Dilshan Madushanka, who removed Vikramjit, Wesley Barresi and Noah Croes in a new-ball spell of five overs that cost nine runs. And by Wanindu Hasaranga, who struck with his first delivery of the match by trapping Teja Nidamanuru in front and did the same to Zulfiqar four overs later to reduce the Dutch to 49/6 after 12. Hasaranga was denied two more wickets by umpire’s call, and Theekshana hastened the end by taking the last four for seven runs.

You can bring as much energy, enthusiasm, hustle and bustle to a contest as you can carry. But it will likely count for little if your opponents are the demonstrably superior side and, importantly, are able to corral enough of that superiority even when they don’t need to win. The Lankans did that on Sunday. 

They twice topped 300 but it’s with the ball that they left their mark on the tournament. Going into Sunday’s game none of the nine other teams had taken more wickets than their total of 64, nor banked a better bowling average than their 18.68, nor a better economy rate than their 4.78, nor more five-wicket-hauls than their three — all by Hasaranga. 

Not that most of the crowd cared. As expected, in the absence of Zimbabwe’s team they threw their support behind the Dutch, who had the good grace to applaud them from the field. A small section of fans on the grass bank had turned out to shout for Sri Lanka, and were joyous in their appreciation of the ground announcer splashing some papare music amid the usual fare.

They knew their team would win long before that was confirmed. They also knew the victory didn’t count for much, and that the going won’t be as easy once they get to the World Cup. The Dutch knew their impressive display in the qualifiers would have been expunged from most memories by the time they arrived in India.

As things stand they will not play a competitive match before that happens. “We’ll go back home and try and put a couple of fixtures together,” Ryan Cook said. “They don’t have any at the moment on the international circuit. This is a call out to anyone who wants to play us. We’d love to have a fixture or two. Our guys have not been to the subcontinent many times before. It would be good to have some fixtures somewhere in the subcontinent as well.”

Financial backing, too, was thin on the ground for the men in orange. “The 50-over World Cup, in particular, presents an opportunity playing India and other countries in India. That brings a lot of eyeballs to the screens. Hopefully we will be able to pick up a sponsor or two, and bring a bit more revenue into the game. It will take a bit of work from our end, and here’s a full invitation to any sponsors out there who feel like being on the front and the side of the shirt in the World Cup.”

No such pleas and promises were made after the game that was played between the pitch table and the boundary on the northern side of the ground on Saturday. HSC’s groundstaff have prepared the surface and the outfield for 10 matches in 22 days, and they have done so expertly and unerringly. Secure in the knowledge that they knew what they were doing with only the final to play, they pitched stumps in the outfield and spent some time in the sun enjoying the fruits of their hard work. Neither torpor nor twitchiness was in evidence.

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Rhymes with orange? Cricket …

“We don’t think about the things that we don’t have. We are grateful for the things that we do have and we maximise them.” – Logan van Beek

Telford Vice / Harare

IN a country where the prime minister and the royal family gad about on bicycles, it follows that news of the Netherlands clinching the last spot at this year’s men’s World Cup by reaching the final of the qualifiers in Zimbabwe is far from the front page.

That the most recently elected of those prime ministers, Mark Rutter, resigned on Friday along with his entire cabinet also helps explain why, if you’re Dutch, you’re probably not thinking about cricket this weekend.    

Besides, in the Netherlands sport means football. Or tennis, hockey, speed skating, swimming or, of course, cycling. Or Max Verstappen. Cricket? That’s something people in England, Australia and India play. Not in the Netherlands, surely. Less cricketminded people in places like England, Australia and India would probably concur. 

Not quite, and not for a long time. Cricket was one of the country’s bigger sports in the 1860s, and the Koninklijke Nederlandse Cricket Bond — or Royal Netherlands Cricket Board — was formed in 1890. The Dutch played their first match in 1881 and they were at the 1996, 2003, 2007 and 2011 ODI World Cups, and the 2009, 2014, 2016, 2019 and 2022 editions of the T20I version.

That’s one tournament short of half of all the men’s World Cups played. Yet the Netherlands aren’t often counted among cricket’s most prominent countries. Especially when the countries who consider themselves among them do the counting. But, at the final against Sri Lanka at Harare Sports Club on Sunday, the Dutch can look forward to being treated like royalty — even if there isn’t a prime minister or a bike in sight.

It will matter little to the crowd that the side in orange are not their beloved Zimbabwe, who veered off the path to India by losing their last two Super Six matches, against the Lankans and Scotland. Victory for Craig Ervine’s team in either of those games would have clinched the place that was secured by the Dutch.

It will matter even less that their opponents are the only unbeaten side among the 10 who started the tournament on June 18. What will matter is that the Netherlands have gone out of their way to see the Zimbabweans beyond the boundary. And to hear them.

If you’ve seen a match in Zimbabwe that has drawn a crowd of any size, especially at HSC, you’ve been treated to multiple renditions of Munowapirei doro. The Shona song’s magic isn’t in its lyrics — which translate to, “Why give them booze now? See, they’re drunk and talking nonsense.” — but in its rhythm, flow and sheer singability.  

Having visited the country from September 2017, Max O’Dowd has heard his fair share of Munowapirei doro. “The first time I came here I heard people singing something in the background, and I didn’t make much of it,” O’Dowd said. “And then we came back for the recent series, prior to the South African series [in March]. I was on the field more and the fans were singing the song, and it was just the catchiest song I’d ever heard. Our local liaison officer told us about it and it caught on in the team.

“I happened to be humming it as we arrived in Zim this time. Some guy on Twitter was filming me and that went viral within the Castle Corner community. Every time I’m down in that corner now they sing the song. I love it. I don’t know the words but I know how it goes.”

What started with a simple song has become more complex. “The Zimbabwean people have made us feel so welcome, and made us fall in love with their culture,” O’Dowd said. “The people here have been amazing and the hospitality has been great. They are so kind, always willing to help. So it’s really easy to love the culture.”

The feeling will be reciprocated by the crowd on Sunday, when the Dutch will be heralded and serenaded as the adopted home side. “We would absolutely love that,” O’Dowd said. “It’s something we don’t experience very often as the Dutch cricket side.”

More often they experience the converse, because the Netherlands is a home for players adopted from other countries. Eight of their XI in the game against Scotland in Bulawayo on Thursday, when their World Cup place was confirmed, were born elsewhere. That can make them seem less like a cricket team than a United Nations project.

“I got sledged by Sean Williams about this; he called us the international side,” O’Dowd said. “I called him out on it. I said, ‘Do you speak the local language?’ He said no. I said, ‘Well, I speak Dutch so you got nothing on me, Sean.’

“We’re not the only team like that. You look at England, New Zealand, where people have tried different avenues or where families have moved. My mum’s Dutch and I grew up there when I was a kid. I’ve got 20 cousins in the Netherlands who absolutely love that I represent the Dutch. And I’m not the only one. We come together as one when we and we represent the Dutch.”

Other sides attach their playing philosophies to what they consider their national culture, or vice versa. It can be difficult to know where the players end and the patriots begin. India’s team have become, for many, exemplars and embodiments of India itself. What happens when this delusion bursts its banks was seen in the Lord’s pavilion on Sunday, where MCC members took Jonny Bairstow’s legitimate stumping as a national insult and behaved deplorably towards Australia’s players.

The Dutch are different, as Logan van Beek explained: “We spoke about this before the tournament, and that was the No. 1 thing that makes this team special — that we’ve got guys from New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Pakistan, India, Holland; a whole melting pot. The connection is that we’re all Dutch. Yes, we all look different. Yes, there’s different names and things like that. But we’re all Dutch and we all fly under that banner. The power of diversity brings different flavours and different types of mindsets. If everyone’s open and willing to accept that it’s amazing what you can discover.”

Maybe van Beek should offer his services in other areas of society: the Dutch government fell on Friday because the four-party ruling coalition couldn’t agree on measures to curb immigration. If they had a culture closer to that of the national cricket team, maybe that wouldn’t have happened. 

More specifically, what was the culture of Dutch cricket? “We don’t think about the things that we don’t have,” van Beek said. “We are grateful for the things that we do have and we maximise them. So if an indoor centre has a broken light or we’ve only got two new balls left, we’re going to find a way to make things work. Wherever we’re staying, whatever the training conditions are like, if we have delayed flights or bags get lost, we’re very adaptable. Not a lot fazes us.

“A lot of other teams have 100 times more resources than us, 100 times more players than us, and all those things and we could complain about all of those things. But we’re trying to maximise what we have, and when the full team buys into that and into getting every little ounce of skill, talent, passion, whatever you want to call it, it’s amazing what can be achieved.”

O’Dowd took a stab at the same question: “One day you’re playing on a beautiful cricket oval and the next day you could be playing on an artificial pitch on a football field with another 16 football fields next to it. But the fans have a lot of say in Dutch cricket, and they’re extremely passionate about the clubs and how to generate the best players.”

Warm fuzziness is all very well, but how does it translate into performance? In the details, like the Netherlands’ near obsession with running twos. Had they not hustled for 32 of them against West Indies at Takashinga on June 26 they wouldn’t have taken the group game to a super over, where van Beek blew the Windies away with bat and ball. Dutch batters have taken 155 twos during the qualifiers, more than any other side and enough to represent 17.5% of all the runs they have scored; also a high for the tournament.    

“We’re sprinting from ball one,” O’Dowd said. “Even if we know it’s one run, we’re trying to create energy. We ran four twos in a row against Scotland [in Bulawayo on Thursday], and then [Bas de Leede] hit one straight to long-off. He should have been caught if the fielder was on the boundary. But because he had come off the rope to try and stop the two, it went over his head for six. It’s little things like that that take care of the bigger things.”

It’s also about getting the little things to add up to bigger things. Zimbabwe were the Netherlands’ closest rivals in twos terms with 134, and the United States were the nearest to them in percentage terms with 14.8. But the Zimbabweans have been shut out of their own party and the Americans limped home as the tournament’s only winless team.

No side at the qualifiers hit more sixes than West Indies’ 44, nor fewer than Sri Lanka’s 10. Yet the Windies have gone home in disgrace after failing to qualify for the World Cup for the first time in their history, and the Lankans are in the final against a side drawn from a country where the Topklasse comprises only 10 teams, who play on just five turf pitches.

Will realities like the latter be part of the narrative when the Dutch arrive in India in November? That while they have been among the bigger fish in the qualifiers’ small pond, they remain World Cup minnows? 

“We understand where we come from and our roots and how people perceive us, but that’s not how we think,” O’Dowd said. “We’ll be going in and playing our brand of cricket. We’ve shown during this tournament what that’s about. We don’t really think about who we’re playing. We do our analysis and our work on the opposition, and we respect them. But that doesn’t mean we’re afraid of anyone. Because if we were afraid then what’s the point of even rocking up? We understand that it’s going to be extremely hard because the opposition will be playing against very good players and very good teams. If we can just get into the battle and a chance presents itself, we’ll take that chance. Then anything can happen.”

Like it did when the Netherlands beat South Africa in the men’s T20 World Cup in Adelaide in November. Or when they held their nerve against the Windies in the qualifiers. Maybe they will lose more than they win against the bigger fish, but there’s no knowing when they won’t. The prospect made van Beek bristle with competitiveness.

“The World Cup is a 10-team competition and we’ve earned the right to be there,” he said. “So we should be treated just the same as any other team that’s there. If they take us lightly they might cop the same thing as West Indies and other teams have in recent times. We believe in the style of cricket that we’re playing, and we have proven to ourselves that that style can beat teams. So we’re going to that tournament and saying, ‘We’re just as likely as you are to win on this given day and at this given time. Let’s go out there and battle.’”

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Fight for right to World Cup party

“Who would have thought it would be us v Holland to go through to the World Cup?” – Michael Leask

Telford Vice / Harare

WHAT right do Scotland have to play in the men’s World Cup? Or the Netherlands? Won’t they have the stuffing batted, bowled and fielded out of them and be put on the first flight home after the group stage?

Rather than those no-hopers, why aren’t two of West Indies, Ireland or Zimbabwe going to the global showpiece in India in October and November? Simply, because they haven’t been good enough in the qualifiers in Harare and Bulawayo in the past two-and-a-half weeks. And the Scots and the Dutch have been good enough.

The Windies lost to Zimbabwe, the Netherlands and Scotland. Ireland went down to Oman, the Scots and Sri Lanka. The hosts reeled off five victories, then crashed out of the running by losing to the Lankans and Scotland.

So the Dutch and the Scots will face off at Queens Sports Club in Bulawayo on Thursday in the most important match of the tournament. At stake will be a place in Sunday’s final against Sri Lanka at Harare Sports Club. Both finalists will earn World Cup berths. There is a chance the Scots could lose on Thursday but still make it to Sunday on net runrate.

The Netherlands have progressed this far by beating Zimbabwe, the United States, Nepal, West Indies and Oman. Scotland have earned wins over Ireland, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, West Indies and Zimbabwe.

The Dutch were comfortably the worst team in the World Cup Super League (WCSL), winning just three of their 24 matches. The Scots topped World Cup league 2 with 24 victories from 36 games. There is a touch of poetry, then, in the bottom side in the premier competition meeting the leading team from the next level down to snaffle the last remaining spot in international white-ball cricket’s blue riband event. 

Michael Leask didn’t need to be reminded of the context. “The Dutch have played against world class opposition for the last two or three years while we’ve been playing associate cricket,” he told a press conference in Bulawayo on Wednesday. I firmly believe associate cricket is one of the hardest forms to play. Every single game is an absolute scrap.

“You don’t know when your next full member fixture is going to be, or when your next big fixture is going to be. But every fixture we get as a Cricket Scotland (CS) nation, getting to step on that park, is an absolute privilege. Tomorrow is no different. We’ve got another huge opportunity against another European rival.

“Who would have thought it would be us v Holland to go through to the World Cup? That’s all I’m going to say; two teams who you might have said would finish fifth and sixth [in the qualifiers] are now fighting it out for one place in a World Cup, where three Test nations have not made it because they’ve been beaten by smaller teams.

“That, to me, is a sign of how good the teams that have to fight harder want it. Because there’s not as much funding, there’s not as much everything. But, my goodness, we have to fight hard to make it happen.”

Five years ago the Scots came to Zimbabwe and failed to qualify for the 2019 World Cup, not least because of poor umpiring. Eight members of their current squad were part of that experience, which “hurt us a lot”, Leask said. But what hasn’t killed them has made them stronger.

“We’re never going to give up in this tournament,” Leask, one of the eight survivors from 2018, said. “There’s been times when we’ve been behind the eight-ball and times where we’ve been losing the arm-wrestle. But in every single game we’ve come out and changed that, and someone has put a hand up — Richie [Berrington] getting a hundred [against the UAE], ‘Solely’ [Chris Sole] getting man-of-the-match [against Zimbabwe], Brandon [McMullen] getting a hundred [against Oman] and a five-for [against Ireland].

“There’s guys in every single game putting their hand up for the shark. That’s what we’ve got to do tomorrow. It might be three guys who have to do it, it might be one. It might be all 11 of us. We might need to do something absolutely special to win the game.” 

This time the Scots came to Zimbabwe under dark clouds cast by an independent investigation damning the game in their country as institutionally racist. The investigation’s report, which was published in January, discovered 448 indicators of institutional racism. CS failed 29 of 31 tests and satisfied the conditions for the other two only partially. The incidents that led to the probe had prompted reports of hate crimes to police.

“We have been through a bit of a tough time,” Leask conceded. “But the way this group’s handled itself, the way we’ve conducted ourselves, the way we’ve … we wear this shirt with a lot of pride, and for us it’s all about leaving the shirt better than we found it. I believe this group’s going a long way to doing that. Yes, there’s been some tough times, but we’re out here competing and we’re doing a very, very good job of it at the moment.

“Back home the support’s been absolutely phenomenal. I can’t thank enough the people who’ve messaged. The messages are going through the roof. We’ve put three Test nations out of the World Cup. What more can we say. We’ve had unbelievable support. We’ve got one more game to go to make them proud.”

Scott Edwards didn’t support Leask’s suggestion that the hard scrabble of associate cricket was tougher than trying to survive in the WCSL. “From the younger guys but even the older guys, the confidence you get from coming up against these full member teams throughout the Super League was massive for us,” Edwards told a press conference in Bulawayo on Wednesday.

“You look at our youngsters like Aryan Dutt, Shariz Ahmed, Vikram Singh — these sort of guys were thrown in the deep end at the start of the Super League. Where they are now, whether they are coming up against Scotland or Sri Lanka, there’s no spotlight to it. It’s just another game of cricket. We feel like coming into this sort of tournament, we’ve done it all before. We took a lot of confidence from that and it shows.”

Both the Dutch and Scottish squads have been depleted by players choosing county over country, but Edwards said his players had taken that in their stride: “Whether guys are here or not here doesn’t really change the type of squad that we are. When the guys come in they are amazing. They fit right into our culture, and if they are not there we are comfortable with the players we’ve got.”

The Dutch were at the 1996, 2003, 2007 and 2011 editions of the World Cup, and the Scots at the 1999, 2007 and 2015 tournaments. Between them they have two wins to show for the effort they have put into 34 matches — one of them, at Basseterre in 2007 — by the Netherlands over Scotland.

But that doesn’t mean anything for Thursday’s game, which looms as a clash between Scottish upstarts and the more established Dutch. The latter are probably favourites, but the ruthlessness with which the Scots broke Zimbabwean hearts in Bulawayo on Tuesday — defending 234 to confirm the home side’s elimination — spoke of a team who were willing to put everything on the line to win. As Leask said, “If you’re not sore after a game like yesterday then you’re not doing it the right way.”

The chances of these two teams reaching the business end of the World Cup are slim. But we heard something similar before the qualifiers, and look where they are now: playing for a place on the biggest stage while supposedly better teams can only watch.

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Zimbabwe’s unhappy days are here again

“Had we gotten over the line today people might not have asked about 2018. Unfortunately we didn’t and it’s another moment a lot of us will live with for a long time.” – Craig Ervine

Telford Vice / Harare

“YOU are not watching the game?” It was less a question than an astounded admonishment, and it came from a man guarding the gate at a Harare hotel on Tuesday. The game at Queens Sports Club in Bulawayo, he didn’t need to say. Between Zimbabwe and Scotland. The game Zimbabwe had to win to clinch the last remaining place in the field for this year’s men’s World Cup.

That the man on the gate was also not watching the game was not pointed out to him. Doubtless he would soon be up to speed with events in the City of Kings, some 440 kilometres away from the nation’s capital. But first he was duty-bound to grant access to the hotel to someone who had had the temerity to nip out to a supermarket when they should have been holed up in their room watching The Game.

At Harare Sports Club big screens beamed the action to a throng that had gathered on a bleak winter’s morning. There seemed to be more sunshine in Bulawayo, and it shone on a steadily swelling, already singing and dancing crowd. They had reasons to be cheerful about Zimbabwe’s prospects. Craig Ervine had won the toss and fielded, and the Scots had been reduced to 170/7 in the 43rd over; not least because Sean Williams took 3/30 in his first 7.1 overs.

But Michael Leask and Mark Watt put their team back on track for a defendable total with a stand of 46 off 33. Fifty-five runs flowed off the last five overs. Scotland’s 234/8 was 14 runs bigger than their effort in the teams’ World Cup qualifying match at the same ground in March 2018 — which was tied.

How did Williams feel about that? “I’m not really one to live in the past, I’m looking forward to the future,” he said immediately after the innings. “I don’t really like to fall backwards. I like to fall forwards. Hopefully today we can do that.”

The anxiety caused in the home side’s ranks by the Scots’ fightback was made plain when Richard Ngarava, who bowled the last over, took animated exception to Joylord Gumbie missing the stumps with an underarm lob that might have resulted in a runout rather than the bye that accrued off the final delivery.

One run matters, especially when you’ve given away too many. And even if 235 should be well within the range of a team who harbour, in Williams and Sikandar Raza, the tournament’s top two runscorers, who have made four of the 20 centuries we’ve seen in the competition. But they scored those runs when it mattered less than it did on Tuesday.

“The expectation that we play with and the expectation they play with is entirely different,” David Houghton said when he popped up onto our screens during the interval. His words proved prophetic.

Zimbabwe have chased down 291 to beat Nepal and 316 to beat the Netherlands in the past two weeks. But that was against attacks that didn’t bristle with Chris Sole and his 150 kilometres an hour lightning strikes, or the nuggety nous of Brandon McMullen — who between them knocked over the top four inside eight overs with only 37 scored. “The best bit of advice I’ve been given is always bowl as quick as you can,” Sole said with a smug smile after the match.

Raza and Ryan Burl shared 54 off 61 and Burl and Wessly Madhevere put on 73 off 74, and Zimbabwe remained on course to haul in the target. But when Madhevere was trapped in front by Watt in the 31st the home side were six down with 71 required. Burl was their last hope, and it took a small miracle to snuff it out.

Having driven Leask through the covers for four and swept him for six off consecutive deliveries, Burl unleashed another sweep. At midwicket, McMullen, hobbled by a tweaked ankle, turned and dashed for all his worth. And stuck up his hands to take the catch with his back turned to the pitch. He was Willie Mays, taker of the most famous catch in baseball history, without a mitt. In the crowd, a young man in a cap stood and wept.

There was no way back from 197/9. The instant the formality of defeat was confirmed, the happy delirium in the stands that has become the anthem of cricket in this country crashed into the saddest of silences. Another man in the crowd, his head wrapped in a Zimbabwe flag, stared balefully into the distance. The camera happened on Williams’ wife, Chantelle Williams, who wore a similar look. For them, it seemed, there was no future to fall into. In 2018 Zimbabwe failed to qualify for the World Cup, despite also playing the qualifiers at home, for the first time since they made their inaugural appearance in 1983. Now it’s happened again.

“Everybody is gutted,” Ervine said. “It would have been nice to put those demons from 2018 to bed. Had we gotten over the line today, people might not have asked about 2018. Unfortunately we didn’t and it’s another moment a lot of us will live with for a long time.”

The result was good for the tournament — one of Scotland or the Netherlands, who clash at the same ground on Thursday, will join fellow qualifiers Sri Lanka in India in October — but catastrophic for the growing number of cricketminded Zimbabweans.

People like the man guarding the gate. What did he think? How did he feel? It would have been cruel to ask.

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Caribbean cookie crumbles, Scotland’s flowers bloom

“This is probably one of the lowest points I’ve had with the team.” – Jason Holder

Telford Vice / Harare Sports Club

OH flowers of Scotland! It’s not so much that they beat West Indies in their men’s World Cup qualifier at Harare Sports Club (HSC) on Saturday. After all they now own consecutive victories over them, having won the T20 World Cup match between the teams in Hobart in October. 

It’s also not that the Scots have come out on top in 16 of the 27 white-ball internationals they have played from December 2022. Nor that they are 12th in the ODI rankings, above Nepal, the Netherlands and the United Arab Emirates — the other three teams who were included in the ICC pecking order for the first time in June 2018. Nor that they have easily the highest winning percentage of those teams since then. From June 2018 they have won 38.12% more of their ODIs than the Dutch.

Nor is it that Scotland have beaten Ireland, the UAE and Oman — and lost only to Sri Lanka — during the qualifiers despite the absence from their ranks of 108 caps worth of white-ball international experience. Brad Currie, Josh Davey and Michael Jones have opted to stay with their counties, while Brad Wheal is injured but likely would have done the same.

Unfairly, for neutrals of a certain age and perspective, nothing Scotland did at HSC on Saturday mattered as much as the confirmation of the unhappy transformation of the men in maroon to maroon macaroons, to crumbling Caribbean cookies. They are fragile and easily chewed, swallowed and forgotten; mere morsels of empty calories. And now, for the first time, they are not good enough to go to a World Cup: Saturday’s result means West Indies have no chance of qualifying for this year’s tournament in India in October and November. 

It’s been a long time coming — since 1995, when the Windies’ domination of the global game started to slip. For 20 years from the start of the inaugural World Cup in 1975, when they triumphed, they won 265 of the 452 matches they played — a success rate of 58.63% — and lost only 121. Since then they have won 355 and lost 536 of 999; a winning percentage of 35.54. The difference is 23.09%.

That’s a hopelessly inadequate way to gauge decline. Rather the truth of it is in the West Indians’ sloped shoulders and slow movement, in their bleak disbelief at having played another poor stroke, in their desperate trudge through the memories of how good their elders and betters were used as they make their way towards the boundary.

In 1976, Tony Greig, England’s unpleasantly aggressive South African-born captain, was rightly castigated for saying, before the start of a Test series that would define the era, “You must remember that the West Indians, these guys, if they get on top are magnificent cricketers. But if they’re down, they grovel, and I intend, with the help of [Brian Close] and a few others, to make them grovel.”

Thus provoked by an undeserving beneficiary of a deeply racist society drawing too close a connection with slavery, Clive Lloyd’s West Indians whipped their former masters 3-0. The real sadness of their current state is that now they are struggling under the weight of their own accumulated failures.

The assumption that the good times would keep on rolling in the Caribbean, and other teams’ efforts to catch up, notably Australia’s, cost West Indies their place at the top of the pile. This we have known for ages. But the past seven days have brought push to shove with rude and indecent haste.

Last Saturday, in front of a roaring, rollicking HSC crowd of 21,000 in a ground built for 10,000 — around 4,000 of the extra 11,000 were accommodated on the rugby field next door, which was equipped with a big screen — they were beaten by Zimbabwe. These things happen, especially against a confident, skilled, talented, ably captained, cleverly coached, passionately supported home side.

But, at Takashinga on Monday, the Netherlands ran West Indies off their feet; first piling up 374/9, their record ODI total, to tie the match and then dominating the super over thanks to Logan van Beek’s heroics with bat and ball. 

And then came the bonnie Scots, well drilled and flinty, and not at all awed. Winning the toss on another damp Harare morning helped, but it still needed proper bowling to reduce the Windies to 81/6 inside 21 overs. Brandon McMullen knocked over the top order of Johnson Charles, Shamarh Brooks and Brandon King in the space of 14 of his deliveries and at the bargain price of seven runs. Jason Holder and Romario Shepherd staved off utter ignominy with a stand of 77, but a target of 182 was never going to be enough to hold Richie Berrington’s side. They knew it, and wended their way to victory with seven wickets standing and 6.5 overs to spare. 

Christopher McBride slapped the first ball of the reply, a full toss from Holder, straight into midwicket’s hands. But Matthew Cross and McMullen snuffed out any hope of a fightback with a partnership of 125. Cross took his team home with an unbeaten 74.

Unlike on Monday, when, led by Holder, the West Indians kept up a lively level of chatter in the field until deep into the Dutch innings, a forlorn and desolate silence prevailed as the Scots chased the runs. The last ball of the 12th over captured the mood — Akeal Hosein bowled to McMullen, who swept to midwicket, where Kyle Mayers shelled the catch. For good measure, the throw back to the middle sailed high and wide of everything and a bonus run accrued.   

“No difficult questions, please,” Holder implored as he arrived for a press conference. “There are no easy questions,” he was promptly told. For instance, had he known a more dismal moment in his more than 10 years and 251 matches as a West Indies international?

“This is probably one of the lowest points I’ve had with the team, but there’s still a lot of positives,” Holder said. “I was really happy and excited for Nicholas [Pooran, the tournament’s second-highest runscorer] and the way he has played throughout this competition.

“It’s good to see some of the younger guys get an opportunity on a big stage, and try to grasp it. I don’t think all is lost. There’s a lot of young guys in the group who can definitely develop and turn things around for West Indies cricket. We’ve got a young crop of guys. We’ve just got to put some support around them.”

Pooran turns 28 in October. Shai Hope and Roston Chase, the Windies’ next most successful batters in the qualifiers, are 29 and 31. Their leading wicket-takers are Alzarri Joseph, Mayers and Hosein, who are 26, 31 in September and 30. That’s not a lot of youth. But, if you’re Holder, struggling for little reward as your 32nd birthday looms in November, maybe almost everybody else seems younger and fresher.  

“It’s disappointing, especially after last year’s effort in the T20 World Cup where we didn’t qualify [for the second round]. I’ve had the luxury of playing in two 50-over World Cups and a couple of T20 World Cups. They’re special occasions. This one will definitely hurt, as the one last year did. But there’s no point moping and keeping our heads down. We’ve got to find a way to turn our cricket around and head in the direction we need to head in consistently. There’ve been too many fluctuations between good and bad performances.”

There was no such gloom in the eyes of Doug Watson, Scotland’s coach and a South African far more pleasant than Greig: “That’s a proper blueprint for how we want to play. Bowl a team out — we dropped one catch unfortunately — and then someone in the top four batted through the innings. That’s what we’re looking to do in all our games. 

“It shows that we can compete at this level. We realise we have to play at our best to compete. It’s tough cricket. Games like this are a real highlight for us and we look forward to them. We see it as a privilege to play in them.”

No-one intercepted Watson as he left the room. Holder was asked to stop and pose for selfies. It’s not much, but at least the Windies will have that when they are sent homeward to think again. 

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Cricket’s democracy alive in beloved Zimbabwe

“It’s wonderful to see all the races mixing like we’ve just witnessed in a playing XI, in the crowd, in the commentary box.” – Andy Flower

Telford Vice / Harare

INFLATION is through the roof. Potholes are through the road. The economy is thready and threadbare. An election pitting a complacent ruling party against splintered opposition looms in August. Yet visceral happiness is concentrated among the thousands in the stands of the country’s cricket grounds, where bliss flows at least as bountifully as beer.

On the field, too, not a lot seems to go wrong. The men’s national team have earned 10 wins and a draw in 15 completed matches across the formats this year. If that seems unconvincing consider that they won none out of 14 as recently as 2020. Or one of 14 in 1992 and none of 17 in 1993, years when established and future giants like David Houghton, Andy Pycroft, Andy Waller, Grant Flower, Andy Flower, Alistair Campbell, Eddo Brandes, John Traicos and Heath Streak were in the XI.     

Cricket in Zimbabwe is enjoying a moment of unprecedented positivity and social and racial unity. And that in a place where the polar opposite has, more often than not, been the case in the game and beyond. How had things gone so right?

“It’s that Zimbabwe is winning somewhere,” Sikandar Raza said. “Zimbabweans are very proud people, and cricket is the only source of happiness they have. They forget about all the troubles we might have in our lives. It is pure joy because the team is winning.”

That explains the bumper attendances. Zimbabwe’s men’s World Cup qualifiers’ match against West Indies at the 10,000-seater Harare Sports Club (HSC) on Saturday was sold out. Thousands more gathered at an adjacent fan park. They roared their team to victory. But what explains the winning?

Houghton, according to Raza and Craig Ervine in recent press conferences. Appointed in June 2022 in the wake of Zimbabwe eking out 21 wins in 90 games under Lalchand Rajput, Houghton has guided the team he once captained — and coached at the 1999 World Cup, where they beat India and South Africa and reached the Super Sixes — to 23 victories in 45 completed matches.

Houghton has done so with confidence, intelligence, empathy and professionalism. In a society that reveres heroes like few others, it helps that he is among those heroes. His players have responded accordingly. They will have to forget all of that if they are to play poorly enough not to nail down one of the two World Cup berths reserved for the finalists at the qualifiers.

“It’s hard for me to sit here and take credit for the way our guys are playing,” Houghton told a press conference after Zimbabwe beat West Indies. “I think I’ve given the guys a little bit more belief in their own ability. There is so much more quality, depth and skill in this team than there was in the days when I played. All we needed to do was get it out of them.”

There is indeed more to Zimbabwe’s leap of faith than Houghton. In the qualifiers, there has been the batting of Ervine, Sean Williams and Raza, who have all scored centuries, three of them by Williams, and the bowling of Richard Ngarava and Raza, who have taken 21 wickets between them.

Something has also been missing: meddling by self-important, power hungry administrators. 

That started changing in August 2015 when Tavengwa Mukuhlani became Zimbabwe Cricket’s (ZC) chair, severing cricket’s ties to an old order that put patronage, self-enrichment and a tangle of conflicts of interest ahead of perceived minor interests like the welfare of the game. Mukuhlani’s first major challenge was to negotiate a better deal for the USD27-million ZC owed to an assortment of banks, some of them part-owned by the ZC administrators who had created the loans, as well as the ICC. 

It took five years, and help from government and guarded compassion from the ICC, to pay the bill. While that was happening Zimbabwe’s regime changed, which meant Mukuhlani had to make cricket’s case to Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government all over again, having just made it to Robert Mugabe’s. All while avoiding the patronage-enrichment-conflicts traps that had blighted the game. 

“We worked with the ICC to restructure the debt,” Givemore Makoni, who has been ZC’s managing director since September 2018, said. “It took some time but we’ve managed to clear it. We worked with our reserve bank, who were very helpful. Once we had dealt with it we refocused on the game itself. We looked at all the important areas and tried to address them, and that has resulted in what you’re seeing today.”

Mukuhlani and Makoni have driven a culture change at an organisation that used to be a bolthole for parasitic suits who didn’t seem to understand — or care — that players were their only assets. “Givemore Makoni has an open-door policy with the senior guys,” Raza said. “Whenever we have an issue we go directly to him and he gives us his ear. More often than not he gives us what we want. That has brought everybody together. Everybody who is part of ZC, working in any capacity, have been brought closer to the players and that has brought the players closer to them. There’s a feeling of oneness. If our team does well, the board, the management and the administration look good. If our team do badly, it also reflects on all of us.”

Makoni gets that loud and clear: “It’s important to keep the players happy. It’s also important to keep them focused on their core business — playing cricket and delivering good results. A lot of consideration has been put into what the players want, and how we address that. The players are the product, and you’ve got to keep the product polished and shiny so that it competes at the highest level.

“We are here for the players and the fans. It’s not about management. It’s about bat and ball; it’s about the results we are seeing on the pitch. That is what will attract people to associate with us.”

Reaching this stage of relative shininess took a lot of polishing. Besides the weighty, high-interest debt and the mafia mentality, years of overt hostility towards players and coaches meant cricket’s human resources had drained away to other countries. Houghton’s presence in the dugout is a vote of confidence in ZC’s new sensibility. As a fixture on the county coaching circuit, he didn’t need to take on the myriad challenges of life and work in Zimbabwe. He had the choice to come home or not, and he chose home — initially as ZC’s coaching manager in October 2021.

There is no better marketing than winning, but ZC have ensured everything from international to franchise, domestic and club cricket in Zimbabwe was “in people’s faces”, Makoni said. “Whenever the national team are playing we’ve made noise. When we won the bid to host the qualifiers we made the kind of noise we might have made to host the actual World Cup. People know exactly what’s happening with cricket. It’s on radio, TV, social media …” 

Time was when covering cricket in Zimbabwe could be done without many taxi drivers, shopkeepers, restaurant waitrons, bartenders or hotel staff being any the wiser. If they did find out they were puzzled: someone sent you all the way here just to report on cricket? Really? Now every taxi driver, shopkeeper, restaurant waitron, bartender and hotel staff member knows not just which teams won and lost that day but who the starring players were, which sides will play the next day, and which teams need to do what to stay in the running in the standings. Covering cricket in Zimbabwe has become not unlike doing so in India, minus the masses and the one-eyed obsession with the national team’s performance.

That is reserved for football, but Zimbabwe haven’t played since Fifa suspended the national body in February 2022. Was cricket simply, and temporarily, filling the void? “We’ve offered an alternative, which people have jumped on,” Makoni said. “Even when football was running we were getting decent crowds, especially when our national team played. This has been a long-term plan that we’ve been slowly achieving. The banning of football has accelerated the pace of what we’re trying to achieve.”

Andy Flower wears his Zimbabwe heart on his sleeve. Even so he has been struck by the game’s new reality: “I was so taken by the crowd at HSC at the Windies game. It was genuinely amazing to see and inspiring to be part of. The closest I’ve seen to it at HSC would have been in 1992, just before the World Cup, when South Africa popped in [to play a 50-over friendly]. There was much interest in that game, obviously, because of South Africa being our big brother.

“But now, having to close the gates at 11 o’clock in the morning, having circa 4,000 people in the rugby ground watching on a big screen, that’s impressive. However it was the spirit of joy and abundant energy and fun and love of the game and connection with the team — that’s what really stood out.

“I’ve experienced cricket all round the world. It’s fun to be in the West Indies. They play music, they play drums, and they genuinely have fun in the stands. But they don’t sing all day. Many thousands of people in India have fun in the stands. They watch the cricket avidly, and it’s so incredibly noisy sometimes you can’t hear yourself shout at each other in the middle. But they don’t sing all day, embracing the joy of the moment. That was really stark and amazing to experience.

“But I do think the best thing about that is it indicates a healthy future for Zimbabwe cricket. Because if there are people enjoying the game to that extent — not just the people in the ground; Zimbabweans around the country watching on TV would have seen that energy, and word of mouth will get around — they are also seeing more black and Asian role models than in our day.

“Youngsters will see Blessing Muzarabani bouncing the ball or Innocent Kaia smacking it over mid-on. That’s evidence that there’s a path to the top. They need to see that to make them believe during those early days. That’s how I remember fantasising about playing international cricket; seeing Graeme Pollock or Dave Houghton play and going, ‘Gee, I want to do that.’ When you play in the garden you’re being those people. That’s what these young Zimbabwean cricketers will be thinking and feeling and fantasising about.”

Flower has done his bit to fulfill those fantasies. He and his father, Bill Flower, played an instrumental role in establishing Takashinga, a club in the heart of Highfield, a major but impoverished black residential area in Harare. Bill found the land for the then-unnamed club and raised funds to turn it into a cricket ground. Andy remembers “digging the holes for the nets”. He also played for Takashinga, which has produced players of the calibre of Hamilton Masakadza and Tatenda Taibu. The ground became an international venue in May 2019, when it hosted eight games in the women’s T20 World Cup Africa region qualifiers. In August 2021 Zimbabwe played Thailand there in three women’s T20s. Takashinga will host nine matches in the current qualifiers.

“It’s brilliant to see those facilities available to kids in Highfield without them having to drive for an hour before they get to a ground elsewhere in Harare,” Andy Flower said. “They’ve got facilities right there, where some of the best players in the world have just played. Jason Holder’s just been there, Nicholas Pooran has smacked the ball over the gum trees, the Netherlands boys put on a show against the West Indies there. I really hope ZC and the decision-makers in this country harness that energy and do something really good with it.”

Flower played 276 matches for Zimbabwe in a career spanning 11 years. He remains their leading runscorer in Tests and ODIs — he retired 13 years before the first T20I was played — and is counted among the game’s finest wicketkeeper-batters.

Opportunities to reach those heights weren’t available to black Zimbabweans of Makoni’s generation. But he was also involved, spade in hand, in Takashinga’s beginnings. He chaired the club on February 10, 2003 — when Flower and Henry Olonga wore black armbands during Zimbabwe’s World Cup match against Namibia at HSC to, they said in a statement, “mourn the death of democracy in our beloved Zimbabwe”. Takashinga labelled their actions “disgraceful”, and expelled Olonga from the club. Neither Flower nor Olonga played for Zimbabwe after the tournament. Both moved to England. Olonga has settled in Australia.

Flower has returned only twice since 2003; the first time five years ago and now as a television commentator. The nation’s future seems fragile and imperfect, but given what he has seen was he able to celebrate the life of democracy in cricket, at least, in his beloved Zimbabwe?

The question prompts one of the sharpest, most thoughtful and articulate people in sport to put a hand across his brow, shielding his eyes. Fifty-three silent seconds pass before he raises his gaze. A single tear bejewels his cheekbone. 

He speaks in a low, breathy, suddenly sandpapery voice: “In answer to your question, yes. I think that is the case. It’s wonderful to see all the races mixing like we’ve just witnessed in a playing XI, in the crowd, in the commentary box …”

His hand goes back to his brow. Another 33 seconds tick by in exquisite quiet. “Sorry. That was quite an emotional time back then …”

Flower’s hand covers his eyes again. Twenty-four more seconds slip away before he finishes his sentence: “ … and so it’s really heartening to see that transformation now.” 

The vulnerability of the moment is trapped not in what Flower says, but in the amber between his words. The hush is filled with birdsong, breeze and the dry, dusty warmth of a golden winter afternoon. Inflation, potholes, the economy and the election seem impossibly far away, and brown, black and white people like Raza, Makoni and Flower concur: whatever else Zimbabwe is and isn’t, it is beloved.

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Windies woe after van Beek’s Dutch double

“You just go out there, keep your head still and hope for the best.” – Logan van Beek’s advice for super over success.

Telford Vice / Takashinga

TWO teams came to Takashinga on Monday dreaming of better days in the men’s World Cup qualifiers. One left holding a handful of hope, the other plunged into pointless purgatory. No such tension prevailed across town at Harare Sports Club, where one side already knew they were bound for bigger things when they took on their hapless, homeward-bound opposition.

The Netherlands are that hopeful side, having earned two precious Super Six points. But, as with all things worthwhile, they didn’t come easily. Instead it needed a super over to separate them from West Indies in a match that was left tied after 748 runs had been scored. The Windies will also progress from the group stage, but with no Super Six points. For a team who have won two World Cups and reached the final of another, that is a catastrophe.

In the super over, Logan van Beek clubbed Jason Holder for three sixes and three fours; all 30 of the Netherlands’ runs. Then van Beek took the ball, claimed two wickets, and kept the damage in West Indies’ reply to eight runs.

“We’ve got two points, that’s the main thing,” van Beek said. “That’s what we came here to do. We’ve given ourselves a chance to qualify [for the World Cup].” Did he expect those points to be so difficult to secure? “It was always going to be hard. West Indies come out and bully you in how they hit the ball. As a bowler it’s intimidating. But we held our nerve. They got away [to 374/6], but [between innings] some of our boys said that’s not enough. You just go out there, keep your head still and hope for the best.”

Christchurch-born van Beek’s grandfather, Sammy Guillen, played eight Tests for West Indies and New Zealand from December 1951 to March 1956. He wore his multiculturalism with pride: “I’m still West Indian, still Dutch and still Kiwi. My grandfather will be upstairs chuckling to himself that I actually hit the ball over the boundary and not to a fielder.

“I’ve trained a lot to bowl yorkers and to hit sixes. Sometimes the opportunity presents itself and you try to take it with both hands. If you stick at it long enough you’re going to have a moment like this. Just keep turning up and you never know what could happen.”

For the second time in three days — in the wake of West Indies’ loss to Zimbabwe at HSC on Saturday — Darren Sammy found himself lumped with having to make sense of it all. “We’ve got ourselves to blame, two crucial matches with points on offer where we’ve got ourselves into good positions and we’ve let it slip,” Sammy said. “It’s a true reflection of where we are as a team. A lot of things have to change. Some of the decisions we made makes you question what’s going on.

“I watched the way the Netherlands batted and the way they ran between the wickets, those are the things I need to try and instil in my team. It was a lesson for our guys. I can safely say we’re the worst fielding team in this competition. We cannot display this kind of attitude and call ourselves an international team.”

That the Dutch could keep abreast of a target 77 runs bigger than any they had successfully chased seemed unlikely. But as the runs rained up, down and all around in a brilliantly run 90-ball stand of 143 shared by Scott Edwards and Teja Nidamanuru, who hammered 111 off 76, Holder was heard loudly exhorting his teammates in the field to “be your brother’s keeper!” It’s a lesson the Windies will want to learn ahead of the challenges they will face in the coming days. 

Zimbabwe, who beat the Windies and the Netherlands, will take four points forward. Either Sri Lanka or Scotland will join the home side on that perch after their match at Queens Sports Club in Bulawayo on Tuesday. The other game in the City of Kings, between Ireland and the United Arab Emirates at Bulawayo Athletic Club, is a dead rubber.

Unbeaten Zimbabwe lurched into a higher gear at HSC on Monday, putting up their record total of 408/6 and thrashing the United States by 304 runs — the second-biggest win in all 4,602 men’s ODIs yet played. Mercifully the yankees, who lost all four of their matches, are going home. As are Nepal, the UAE and, surprisingly, Ireland.

The Irish have been among the louder voices protesting the World Cup’s reduction to 10 teams, which was the case in 2019 and will be again in India in October and November. Not since 1992, when nine teams lined up, has the field been so small.

Ireland made their World Cup debut in 2007, when there were 16 teams, and they were among 14 in 2011 and 2015. They have won only seven of their 21 World Cup games and tied another, but their successes have tended to be if not seismic then significant — over Pakistan and Bangladesh in 2007, England in 2011, and West Indies and Zimbabwe in 2015.

The Irish have in the past made a decent case for a bigger World Cup, but they didn’t put their runs and wickets where their mouths are to get there this time. Muddled, unclear, uncertain selection let them down, and will cost them a USD1-million World Cup participation fee.

Happier stories in the qualifiers have been told not only by the Dutch but also by Oman and Scotland, who both beat Ireland. The Scots earned two Super Six points for overcoming Oman despite being depleted by players opting to stay with their English counties rather than turn out for the national side.

The Netherlands, too, have been significantly undermined by county commitments. That didn’t matter on Monday, when the most motivating place the Dutch could be was with their backs against the wall. They will never forget Takashinga.

Cricbuzz

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Zimbabwe can see clearly now the mist has gone

Could it be that cricket, in the absence of the suspended national football team, has filled the void to become the people’s game in Zimbabwe?

Telford Vice / Harare Sports Club

ARE we in San Francisco? The Namib Desert? Nuwara Eliya? Newfoundland? On top of Table Mountain? No, that really is Harare out there draped in wan, wintry mist early on Saturday morning. It is eight degrees Celsius, or not nearly warm enough to play cricket. Except maybe in the northern reaches of Yorkshire.

But in two hours the first ball will be bowled in the day’s men’s World Cup qualifying matches: between Nepal and the Netherlands at Takashinga, and Zimbabwe and West Indies at Harare Sports Club. Happily by the time that happens the funereal sky clears to reveal the familiar vast cornflower blue dome that hovers upturned over this country for much of the winter, replete with temperatures in the mid-20s.

With matches starting at 9am because of the lack of daylight and floodlights at all four grounds in use in Harare and Bulawayo, batting is best avoided until the sun is well up and has dealt with the morning’s moisture. The numbers back that up: the team batting second had won only four of the dozen games in the tournament before Saturday, and two of those trend-bucking wins were achieved in mismatches. In eight games, teams have lost from two to four wickets with nine to 25 runs scored inside the first 10 overs. What would Saturday’s airborne veil of additional dampness do to that theory? Not enhance it, as it turned out.

At Takashinga, Nepal stumbled to 7/1 in the third over when Aasif Sheikh dragged Logan van Beek onto his stumps. But Kushal Bhurtel and Bhim Sharki stabilised the innings with a stand of 39 off 75, only for the last nine wickets to fall for 121 and leave the Netherlands a measly target of 168. They mowed it down in 27.1 overs with seven wickets standing to clinch their place in the Super Six.

All of which passed without the nation’s eyes blinking. They were fixed on HSC, where at a still chilly 8am the stands were already starting to swell with spectators. Shai Hope won the toss and chose to field — like every captain has done in all 14 matches in the tournament. But the building crowd had something to warm them in the shape of a patient, careful opening partnership by Joylord Gumbie and Craig Ervine that yielded 63 runs and endured into the 16th over. So much for the condensation considerations.

The throb of president Emmerson Mnangagwa’s helicopter overhead — he holds meetings across the road at Zimbabwe House — flooded the scene after three overs, but Gumbie took back ownership in the sixth with a slashed six off Alzarri Joseph.

Thus emboldened, the denizens of Castle Corner, many of them wearing white hard hats and red overalls, took to booing Keemo Paul when he dared to run past their stand. The beef goes back to the 2016 under-19 World Cup in Bangladesh, when Paul, in his delivery stride, ran out non-striker Richard Ngarava to end the match.

Zimbabwe had been nine-down in search of three off six to win that match. The result put the Windies in the quarterfinals — they won the title that year — and the Zimbos on a plane home. The Castle Corner faithful will never forgive Paul for adhering to the rules, just as they will never berate Ngarava for costing his team the game by stealing ground.

With that came a flashback to Tuesday’s game between Zimbabwe and the Dutch at HSC, where Max O’Dowd was serenaded by the crowd with the same Shona song he had learnt to sing during an earlier visit to the country. Something has shifted in the culture of cricket in this country if the same all-black section of the crowd that feels the freedom to hail a white opponent can also heap scorn on a black player in a team who have championed black excellence for so long, and all in the space of three days. Could it be that cricket, in the absence of the suspended national football team, has filled the void to become the people’s game in Zimbabwe?

The jeers had barely subsided when Rovman Powell dropped Ervine at mid-on off Kyle Mayers. It was the first of four spilled chances, three of them off Joseph’s bowling. Another flashback, this time to Thursday at HSC, where the faces of Hope and Nicholas Pooran dimmed with disbelief when they were asked, during their press conferences, about their readiness for Saturday’s big match.

For them, they didn’t say out loud, the match wasn’t that big. For Zimbabwe, and Zimbabweans, it was huge. And it showed from both sides of that equation, not least in the good vibrations coming from a ground now packed to capacity; perhaps beyond.

With Paul taking three wickets and Joseph and Akeal Hosein sharing four, the West Indians were able to limit Zimbabwe to 268. Sikandar Raza and Ryan Burl scored 68 and 50 and shared 87 in a stand that started at 112/4 in the 25th. But its end, when Hosein trapped Burl in front in the 41st, started a slide of 6/69. Zimbabwe’s total was their lowest in their three matches in the qualifiers and the first time they have been dismissed in four ODIs.

But the Windies’ listlessness in the field followed them to the crease. Brandon King and Mayers began the reply solidly enough with a joint effort of 43, and Mayers did his bit with a sturdy 56. It was the latter’s dismissal in the 21st, when he failed in the not insignificant task of clearing the 2.03-metre Blessing Muzarabani at long-off, that gave the narrative the beginning of its decisive turn.

Hope and Pooran, both century-makers on Thursday, were cleared away for 30 and 34 by Raza and Ngarava. When Tendai Chatara, who went for 46 in his first seven overs, reduced West Indies to nine-down by bowling Roston Chase off the edge in the 43rd with 44 required, the game was up and the crowd knew it. Their roar was louder than any helicopter.

Chatara ended it, and the collapse of 6/58, a dozen deliveries later when Joseph bunted a simple catch to Raza at short midwicket. Hosein, the non-striker, took the defeat, by 35 runs, especially hard: teammates and opponents alike couldn’t prise him from his haunches for more than a minute. This time the noise from the crowd was less raucous, more satisfied — the expression of a collective mind comfortable in their new knowledge. It was a clear day in Harare and they could see forever. 

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