Zimbabwe Cricket deserved to be criticised during the 2000s and it was. Such was the decay in administration and performance that no place on the international stage could be justified. The decision to withdraw from Test cricket was wisely taken — and in the nick of time.
Having reported on virtually every incoming tour to the country from the inaugural Test against India in 1992 to 2000, I became passionate about cricket in Zimbabwe. It wasn’t easy to sit back and watch the decade of misery which followed and, though the criticism may have seemed easy to dish up, it wasn’t pleasant.
Zimbabwe’s refusal to sanction my return to report or commentate undoubtedly soured relations and inevitably increased an already biased slant on events. The trickle of information which came from the country was almost inevitably from the disenfranchised and a balanced perspective became impossible.
The story of Zimbabwe Cricket’s attempt to reintegrate meaningfully into the world game is too long and complex to fill a novel, let alone this page, but for me it began with an invitation from a man I had labelled a tyrant, among other things.
ZC managing director Ozias Bvute is certainly not perfect, but welcoming several hours of finger-pointing, chest-jabbing questioning from a hostile journalist is unusual behaviour for a dictatorial, self-serving administrator, as I had called him (based on the information I had been able to gather).
Every question was asked and answered. The ICC spent more than $500 000 on a forensic audit of ZC’s financial affairs following allegations of theft and corruption by Bvute and chairperson Peter Chingoka. The results were never published. Bvute swears he wishes they had been. They revealed some incompetence, outdated accounting systems and naivety about such things as broadcasting costs.
Whether either man also profited from the economic collapse of the nation’s financial system is undecided. But many businessmen did — just ask the tobacco and property industries how much money was made by currency trading during the freefall of the Zim dollar.
But if Bvute did benefit personally then he is giving back to cricket at an extraordinary rate. And he already has an American green card guaranteeing residency, so why is he risking his personal fortune by bank-rolling Zim cricket’s debt of close to $4-million?
Ultimately, however, the most pertinent question may be this: Why should the country’s many, many aspiring cricketers be denied the chance to compete at the highest level because of allegations against their bosses and, even more pertinently, because of the horrendous and abject suffering inflicted on millions of the population by the president of the nation?
South African sports teams of the 1980s knew more than most about the stigma created by isolation and the frustrations of a situation beyond the control of “mere” sportsmen. But the rest of the world was united in its condemnation of apartheid; and the abhorrence of anything that could be construed as indifference, let alone support, of the regime was universal. “No normal sport in an abnormal society.” The slogan was sharp and pertinent and the global sports media took eveery opportunity to use it.
The only debate about the slogan today concerns the interpretation of “abnormal”, but sports boycotts are few and far between, which, presumably, means that a nation’s imperfections and sometimes even appalling faults and abuses are expected, if not accepted, but are still no reason to cancel sporting contact.
South Africa deserved its isolation even if the innocent among its sports people did not. But since the overthrow of apartheid almost 20 years ago, international sporting sanctions have been marginal, localised, short-term and often even petty. Sometimes calls for sporting boycotts are ill-considered and based on emotion rather than analysis or fact.
Even for the most passionate, anticolonial pan-Africanist, for whom Robert Mugabe was, and always will be, a heroic freedom fighter, the president of Zimbabwe was a hard man to whom unconditional support could be given for much of the past decade while his tyrannically obsessed leadership dragged a once-prosperous country into economic ruin. Hundreds of thousands of his fellow citizens either fled or starved. Fact. Not fiction, not propaganda, just the truth.
Since the beginning of 2009, however, with the formation of a government of national unity and the official adoption of the rand and the US dollar as national currencies in place of the laughable local equivalent, the people of Zimbabwe are gradually hauling themselves and their life prospects back from the abyss.
Yet, extraordinarily, there are calls for the Zimbabwean cricket team to be banned from international competition. The national team has an average age of 24 and is full of passion and determination. They long to recreate the era of the early and mid 1990s when Zimbabwe, always the underdog, was a team to be, if not feared, then respected at all times and costs.
Zimbabwe Cricket is still cursed with racial tension and misunderstanding, but there are many differences today from the early 2000s when national captain Heath Streak led a walk-out by 15 white “rebels”. There is a genuinely shared vision among the players, with the return of Test cricket at its hub.
There is a powerful belief that politics — and its influence — can no longer extend into the professional lives of the players. Ten years ago they would not speak outside of cricketing affairs because they were cautious, even fearful, of the consequences. Today they see that option as a right rather than a necessity. Whereas they once considered political talk a hazard, they now see it as an irritation.
Zimbabwe is, in the words of the life-long human rights lawyer and current minister of education and sports, David Coltart, “a country in transition, but one which is working hard to resolve its own problems”.
Coltart (52) has suffered things in his life that many of Zimbabwe’s critics would be unable to digest mentally, let alone physically. Houses burned down, staff terrorised and multiple imprisonments. Yet he declares, unbowed: “Zimbabwe needs all the strength it can get and, believe me, I know for certain that a strong cricket team gives people some hope and belief that we are still heading in the right direction.”
Bvute says: “I wish more of our critics would come and see us, come and see for themselves. Our books and accounts are a matter of public record. Anybody with an interest is welcome to come and be our guest. Hopefully they will also have time to see the work being done across the board in Zimbabwe cricket, the franchise system, our development programme and everything else.”
Streak, the “rebel” leader, is now national bowling coach. “Things aren’t perfect, but the will and desire is undoubted. It’s simple to me: You either want to be part of the problem or you want to be part of the solution. It didn’t take me long to decide. I have a son and I want him to be able to play for Zimbabwe.”
Bvute has given another former national captain, Alistair Campbell, the task of “making the rebirth of Zim cricket happen”. He chairs the selection panel and heads the national cricket committee.
“It’s time to draw a line in the sand,” Campbell says. “Whatever happened in the past is gone; it’s time to move forward. We struggled as a nation for a decade and, whilst there’s still plenty for the politicians to sort out, it’s time for cricket to put the crap behind us and head into the next decade.”
Neil Manthorp ended a seven-year banishment from Zimbabwe by accepting an offer to commentate on the country’s inaugural, domestic T20 tournament last month before travelling with the national team to the Caribbean as media liaison officer for the five-match ODI series against the West Indies