ZC celebrates 10 years of nothing

Zimbabwe Cricket national team now has more black players.

ON NOVEMBER 4, 2014, the present Zimbabwe Cricket (ZC) logo will be 10 years old.  Long-serving chairman, Peter Chingoka, who has faced a series of player strikes over non-payment of salaries until the recent bailout by the International Cricket Council (ICC) justified the process behind the new logo saying:  “Our dreams and horizons have changed. They need new expression. The union needs a new corporate identity that proudly captures and shows off its beliefs.”

Many thought the wisdom of the Dakota Indians of the United States who subscribed to the philosophy that when one discovers he is riding a ‘dead horse’, the best strategy was to dismount. But, with modernisation, a whole range of far more advanced strategies are employed such as:
-Buying a stronger whip.
-Changing riders.
-Threatening the horse with termination.
-Appointing a committee to study the horse.
-Arranging a visit to other countries to see how others ride dead horses.
-Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be included. lReclassifying the dead horse as living impaired.
-Hiring outside consultants to ride the dead horse.
-Declaring that as the dead horse does not have to be fed, it is less costly, carries lower over heads and therefore contributes substantially more to the bottom line of the economy than do other horses.
-Rewriting thus lowering the expected performance requirements for all horses.
-Promoting the dead horse to supervisory position.

One cannot help but notice the similarities of these actions to the various management exercises that have been part of ZC since 2004. I suppose one would ask, what constitutes a ‘dead horse’, evidently it is not one that is lifeless.  What is also interesting is that during the period between 2005 and 2014 the words dead and or dying have been used to describe the state of Cricket in Zimbabwe. In the earlier stages it was said, “Cricket is dying in Zimbabwe” and then “Cricket is dead in Zimbabwe”.

The past 10 to 11 years, the actions of ZC has resorted to solving its problems by:
-Buying a stronger whip, (the control of the organisation was centralised).
-Changing riders, (the face of local cricket changed: black captain, black coaches, black managers, and an increase in the numbers of black players black umpires.
-Threatening the horse with termination, (calls of expulsion from within and without, employees, coaches, and players who questioned the status quo were fired or forced to leave)
-Appointing a committee to study the horse, (workshops galore and introduction of tertiary programme which must be said was an excellent idea).
-Arranging a visit to other countries to see how others ride dead horses, (visits to Australia and South Africa).
-Lowering the standards so that ‘dead horses’ can be included, (for some by increasing the number of provinces standards were lowed).
-Reclassifying the dead horse as living impaired, (reclassification of the number of provinces from five to ten and back to five again, Franchise Cricket, and recently this has been cut to four).
-Hiring outside consultants to ride the dead horse, (Metacom (PVT) Ltd, ICC Commission of Inquiry).
lRewriting, thus lowering the expected performance requirements for all horses or promoting the dead horse to supervisory position.
(Hiring non performing players and coaches to coach and play for national team, because for instance they are from Takashinga Cricket Club).

Surprisingly, Chingoka who has been at the helm of ZC for the past 22 years and presided over a lot of discord in the sport has declared that he would stand for re-election at next year’s board elections. Then there is Givemore Makoni, a conundrum in itself. Happy 10th birthday ZC, no more of the same please. Sorry for the pun. – Steyn Kombayi

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