We offer our apologies for the late arrival of this the last issue of our Zimbabwe Online magazine for the 1999/2000 season, due to serious technical problems. We plan to start again in September, and we have plans to improve our coverage of Zimbabwean cricket .

In the meantime the tour of England and the Zimbabwe tour of Sri Lanka can be followed through the main page of CricInfo. I am being employed by CricInfo to cover the England tour and will be sending regular reports on the progress of the matches at regular intervals during the day, as well as other articles concerning the tour. Zimbabwe have beaten England more frequently than they have beaten any other Test-playing country, but the World Cup match between the two countries last year, as well as comments by a couple of the players, casts doubt on their belief in their ability to do it in England. After their sorry saga in the West Indies, England can clearly only be favourites to win the Test series, and Zimbabwe favourites to return home early in the one-day triangular tournament. Sadly, nobody at present will be trying to bribe Zimbabwe to lose matches.

And yet this need not be the case. All our experienced players have proved in the past that they do have what it takes to succeed at international level. The problem is in the head, not in their ability or their techniques. Unfortunately it seems to be a national characteristic, as Zimbabwe have a long-standing history, as was evident in their Currie Cup days, of lack of self-belief, choking under pressure. Self-belief is the key. It was a problem with South Africa for many years, and Eddie Barlow is the man usually credited with inspiring that country's cricketers to believe in themselves. Since the sixties they have never suffered seriously from that problem again, although they are not quite in the class of the Australians.

A nicer bunch of men could hardly be found than the Zimbabwe players, and they will undoubtedly be popular with the English crowds - as long as the public think they are worth watching and turn out in sufficient numbers to merit that term. It is presumably Zimbabwean society itself that is at fault in one sense, teaching its children to be too self-effacing and being too quick to crush over-confidence rather than channel it. We do not want the excesses in sport that are sometimes shown by some international cricketers - sledging, intolerance, arrogance and the like. Too often Zimbabweans fail to think like winners, and it shows in their cricket. Being a comparatively small nation does not help, either. Perhaps if the country, at present teetering on the edge of self-destruction, can change course and begin to fulfill its potential as a prosperous nation again, worthy of the respect of the international community, that will help. The present troubles cannot fail to have some sort of subconscious psychological effect on the players, even those who are not farmers. But they may still surprise us. One good win, most probably when batting first because it is the batsmen who are most likely to crumble under pressure at the crunch, may be all that is needed.

In this issue we have concentrated on further biographies of Zimbabwe A tourists and Academy players, although circumstances have not yet permitted us to interview Richard Sims, Andrew Stone and Academy director Gwynne Jones. These are planned for early next season, when the New Zealanders will be touring. We have some statistics, and ZCU chief executive Dave Ellman-Brown gives his views on a season where Zimbabwe cricket suffered frequently on the international field but prospered in many ways away from it.

See you in September. Thanks for your support.