A New Year, after a two-week break for Zimbabwean cricketers, is a good time for previews and summaries, with the major international tours to the country behind us and a different programme ahead. In this issue we include hopefully all the statistics you will want to know about Zimbabwe's recent international cricket, including updated records in Test and one-day internationals.

We have to apologise for our inability to bring you a great deal in the way of written articles, though. Zimbabwe has not been a media-conscious country as far as cricket is concerned, mainly because the local media since independence has largely ignored the game and most other sports apart from soccer, and much of what is included in the press tends to be racially slanted. For those who look back at the historical section of the ZCU website, which now includes first-class match scorecards and newspaper reports from the 1965/66 and 1966/67 seasons, there is no comparison between both the quality and quantity of cricket reporting in those days, and what appears in the local newspapers today.

Partly as a result, those involved in the sport in this country have been unused to passing on reports of cricket with which they were involved, whether it be at national, provincial, club or school level. Hence our difficulty in obtaining reports and information. A number of people approached have promised reports and consistently failed to deliver them, especially at provincial level. Others, mainly at school level, seem to have ignored requests for information. As we are at present unable to offer any payment for articles on this site, there seems to be no incentive for them to contribute.

We will continue to try. In the meantime, we would first like to thank most of all those who have and continue to contribute written articles for our online magazine, especially Peter Whalley and Iain Campbell. Some have willingly given interviews, and we give them our thanks as well, but it is not always possible to get the information we need, or in the best way, solely through interviews. We need a greater willingness to contribute in writing where desirable.

Here readers may be able to help. If there are any specific areas where you would like information, any specific schools, provinces or subjects which you would like to see covered, please let us know, and keep on asking! We can then approach certain people to tell them there have been specific requests for articles, and perhaps this will stimulate them to co-operate. Please let us know; this will help to give us credibility and to broaden the scope of our magazine.