Max Ebrahim, the convenor of Zimbabwe’s cricket selectors, believes his country’s Test status is irrevocable. Given that his livelihood depends on that status, he’d be forgiven for defiant rhetoric, even rhetoric not necessarily based on facts.
”It took New Zealand 45 years before they had their first win,” he told Sapa earlier this week.
”Look at what’s happening to New Zealand now. Australia beat them 5-0 in the one-day series, and then won the first Test in just four days. But nobody’s saying that New Zealand should lose their Test status.”
That’s because losing to Australia in four days represents an infinitely better performance than losing to South Africa in under two. And it took New Zealand 45 Tests, not years, to record their first win. Given that those 45 Tests were spread over 26 years, it’s a testament to Kiwi resolve and skill that they scraped enough continuity and talent to register a win that early.
No, Zimbabwe in its current shape has no business playing Test cricket. In fact Ebrahim spoke truer than he perhaps knew when he added: ”If it’s just results that count, perhaps there should be only four countries with Test status.” It might be a good start, given the haste with which the bottom third of the international draw is slipping into cricketing ignominy.
The sight of Tatenda Taibu captaining Heath Streak summed up the tour in a single, peculiar portrait. Taibu is a bright and personable cricketer, and if Zimbabwe ever recover he will be at the vanguard of that recovery; but he was just starting high school when Streak was playing Test cricket, and the obvious deference he showed to his senior bowler made a mockery of all the political gangrene that has rotted the team so far.
All of which made Monde Zondeki’s career-best performance at Centurion more, rather than less, noteworthy. Jaded critics might suggest that 6/39 against what is essentially a weak first-class B team, is little to write home about. Not so. Zondeki did exactly what good players do to weak opposition: he massacred them. Far more important than his statistics was his focus, his intent, and, above all, his instinct to attack.
One hopes he also possesses the instinct to hold his ground, to become defensive, for there will plenty of call for that should the West Indies get going against South Africa on the upcoming tour of the Caribbean.
However, he bowled long enough at Centurion to reveal an aspect of his craft that will be familiar to many Jamaicans in the months ahead: an ability to bowl a scrambled seam that somehow, more often than not, lands just right and does enough to beat the bat. It was Courtney Walsh’s great talent, and while Zondeki will never frighten top batsmen with bounce or perform miracles of accuracy like Walsh in his prime, there is enough in his still developing arsenal to make him a more than useful first change bowler over the next few seasons.
It seems ironic that a green, boyish quick bowler, especially one with a history of fitness problems, should provide the promise of stability, but after Centurion’s procession of walking wounded, and the prospect of a Caribbean tour on flat, unforgiving, unrewarding pitches, a full spell seems like riches. Indeed, Zondeki’s conventional athleticism — and the refreshing ordinariness of Ashwell Prince’s maiden Test ton — seemed out of place in a week that saw the status quo of the international game tremble. The Australians have dropped 19 catches in five Tests, 15 of them in a slip cordon that five years ago was stocked with human fly-paper.
Inzamam-ul-Haq’s inexperienced Pakistanis defied their notorious penchant for folding — and a huge Indian crowd — to secure a draw at Mohali. Brian Lara was dropped as financial squabbles tore apart a West Indian team that can barely survive the usual ebbs and flows of the game, let alone cigar-chomping men in white suits and Panama hats waving cheques at them.
The wheel turns, and the South African team will turn with it. But at least for now it seems we won’t end up under it.