As a Zimbabwe cricket fan, one can draw few positives from recent series, where the national side has strung together a long run of losses. However, the rise of young promising players such as Travis Friend, Sean Ervine and Hamilton Masakadza has provided a ray of hope for the future of Zimbabwean cricket.

Another name coming to the fore is Andrew Durham, who was recently selected for the Zimbabwe Under-19 squad that will tour South Africa and travel to New Zealand for the ICC Under-19 World Cup. Andrew is a top all-rounder who has opened the bowling and batted number three for the Peterhouse First XI for the past four years, as well as captaining the side in the past year. This season he averaged 40 with the bat, including two hundreds, and as a strike bowler averaged 15 runs per wicket.

Paul Davis, who is in charge of cricket at Peterhouse, said of him, "He is a very competitive young man who has given outstanding service to school cricket and I believe, and certainly hope, will represent the nation in the near future. In my ten years of coaching he is undoubtedly the most talented cricketer I have dealt with, and his greatest strength is that the tougher the opposition is, the better he plays, and this is what makes him such a top competitor."

That sort of competitiveness should come in handy for Andrew, as he faces the world's top up-and-coming players who will be hoping to make a point to their respective national selectors, just like he will.

© CricInfo