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Tour Summary and Analysis of Zimbabwean Prospects
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Zimbabwe's Tour of England, Aug-Sep 93
The key word on this tour was RAIN. It was always around,
and affected most of the matches. The tour went as follows:
1-day vs President's World XI : tied.
3-day vs President's World XI : drawn.
1-day vs Glamorgan : Glam won by 58 runs.
1-day vs Warwickshire : abandoned (rain).
3-day vs Surrey : drawn.
3-day vs Kent : Kent won by 198 runs.
Zimbabwe had a good chance of winning the Surrey match but
lost too much time on the last day because of rain. The Kent
match was also heavily rain-affected, only a double
declaration on the last day gained a result.
The Zimbabwe performances were encouraging, despite the lack
of good results. They brought a very young team on this
tour, the average age of the 14 players was 24, with only
three players older than 25. Stalwarts like John Traicos,
Ali Shah and Andy Pycroft were not included. The ZCU have
basically decided that the next few years are going to be a
learning process, and as such they're better off investing
their time in the young players rather than sticking with
the veterans. Former skipper Dave Houghton confirmed that
the Surrey match was his last game for Zimbabwe, and it's
unlikely that Traicos, although not officially retired, will
carry on much longer.
Zimbabwe's batting will be heavily dependent on the Flower
brothers, Andy and Grant, over the next few years, along
with left-handed no. 3 Alistiar Campbell. These three almost
won the Surrey game for Zimbabwe - they needed 256 to win
off 59 overs, and were 122-1 at tea with Andy Flower and
Campbell keeping the scoring rate above 4 an over. But more
time was lost due to rain and wickets were lost with batsmen
trying to keep up with an almost impossible run rate. They
eventually gave up with 6 wickets down, and even more rain
completed the job. The Kent game was a bit of a disaster,
but with Houghton, Andy Flower and veteran opener Kevin
Arnott all missing the match Zimbabwe's batting lacked depth
(only 4 specialist batsmen played) and experience. The
second innings collapse to 83 all out was not totally
unexpected under the circumstances.
The bowling looked promising, but is not yet anywhere near
world-class. Veteran Eddo Brandes was sharp at times, and
left-armer David Brain had some good spells (notably 6-48 in
the first innings of the Kent game when they were reduced to
32-5 at one stage). One newspaper reporter even said that
Brain should be snapped up by a county, he's probably as
good as Ilott or any of the other England lefties - probably
a very generous assessment, but I'm sure it was appreciated!
Teenagers Heath Streak (who also looks a good batsman) and
Dan Rowett showed some promise, but they've still got a long
way to go. A lot of the bowling was done by off-spinner
Steve Peall, who had three 3-for performances. The
Zimbabweans think he can be a very good bowler, if he can
keep his discipline - according to Dave Houghton he has the
ability to put on 10 kg of weight in an evening at the bar!
To summarise, the Zimbabweans have some very promising young
players but it will be a good few years before they can hope
to produce a truly world class side, if at all. The success
of their under 19 side this year (they won the international
tournament in Denmark, beating England in the final) shows
that the talent is there, if the problems of lack of finance
(the low exchange value of the Z$ is really crippling) and
simple logistics can be overcome. At the end of the day, the
key will almost certainly be whether or not some of the
native Zimbabwean population can be persuaded to switch from
football to cricket - it's unlikely the small white and
Asian minorities in the country can sustain the game
indefinitely.
Thanks to Don Hughes on r.s.c.
Contributed by The Management (help@cricinfo.com)
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