Zimbabwe Cricket in trouble again

riffmongous

There's been some on the field improvements with the team looking fairly competitive against Pakistan in the 20/20s and ODIs but off the field things are a complete mess, the players were threatening to boycott the tests until today unless they were paid monies they were owed. Rumours still going around that Williams wont take part and there has been another round of players lost, Cremer has made himself unavailable, Jarvis has left to play county cricket, Price recently retired and Taibu has been gone for just over a year now.

With Mugabe and Zanu getting re-elected again for another term (and who knows when the next democratic elections will be now) and the reluctance of the ICC to get involved is there any chance of Zimbabwe cricket ever recovering? Anyone here from Zim actually?

BarryD

Zimbabwe is a full member of the International CC. I wouldn't know much about the politics of it all but if Zimbabwe falter, is this an opportunity for the likes of Ireland? You'd think that another northern hemisphere team would be attractive in terms of balance? Mind you, I suppose we'd have to be able to compete and have a full time structure for players?

Rascasse

BarryD wrote: »

Zimbabwe is a full member of the International CC. I wouldn't know much about the politics of it all but if Zimbabwe falter, is this an opportunity for the likes of Ireland? You'd think that another northern hemisphere team would be attractive in terms of balance? Mind you, I suppose we'd have to be able to compete and have a full time structure for players?

Not a chance. Deutrom doesn't want to apply until the team and set up are ready. He estimates that at 2019/20, which could yet prove to be overly ambitious. It is in no ones interest for Ireland to replicate Bangladesh who moved up too soon. Their record in their first 5 years as a test playing nation was:
Played|40
Won|1
Lost|35
Drawn|4
Ireland being the whipping boys wouldn't help anyone. To grow and be able to keep players they need more experience, better facilities, probably a first class system (of some description), and a lot more money to compete with the £££ that the ECB can offer.

BarryD

Quite likely but take Italy in the Six Nations - they were regarded as the 'whipping boys' for a good few years (but not any more) and as far as I know the game has a low professional profile in Italy itself. Most of their players are in other European leagues. Or even soccer in Ireland, OK a much wider grassroots base and a full timeish league but our international team is mostly in UK.

Can you apply this to cricket here? If more players were good enough to play at county level in UK but then also able to represent Ireland at test level?

You get a sense that the game is on the up here but can that be sustained? Most uninformed Irish people looking at the situation yesterday re Eoin Morgan & Boyd Rankin and Ed Joyce before them, would be mystified. Whatever about the ins and outs of it, it doesn't reflect well for the average Irish person..

riffmongous

Well cricket in Zimbabwe has a good tradition, much like South Africa's. So far SA has managed to avoid getting too involved with the countries politics (although I read that SA has recently introduced an underage quota system which might cause some problems in a few years) and Zimbabwe did too for a while, they had a decent set up and a few very good players but around the early 2000s when Mugabe introduced a lot of his reforms some of the players did a protest during the 2003 world cup and then most of them left Zimbabwe or were forced to leave. The administration was filled with Mugabe cronies and corruption.

On the field there has been a huge decrease in quality compared to the 1990s team, but there has still been periods where they have managed to be competitive. However for a long time they were exiled from playing test cricket, and this is a sticky point for Irish cricket that while essentially their international team was in the same position as Ireland, the assosciation was still a Full Member and hence entitled to the huge sums of money that come with that, while Ireland get a fraction of that (iirc 7.5m vs 1.5m) and while Zimbabwe does have a lot more domestic cricket to sponsor very little of that money is actually making it past the administrators, the domestic competition is a shambles, the players aren't getting paid and then usually only receive a portion of what they are entitled to. This all means that the senior players usually leave to get a proper wage playing in England, the young players aren't getting the same level of coaching as before and the country itself is in a mess.

I think there are 2 ways it relates to Ireland, first on the field we need to play them more and beat them every single time, but we rarely get to play them, we have played them 4 times since the tie in our first world cup and lost 3 of those games, but that was last back in 2010. The second is that when Zimbabwe cricket eventually collapses there is going to be an awful lot of spare money going around plus one less vote on the ICC panel that has traditionally been used to support India so perhaps that will be an opportunity for Ireland.. but the ICC has so far been so reluctant to deal with Zimbabwe that it could take years and Ireland needs that investment sooner.

BarryD

Is it a 'chicken & egg' problem? What's the difference in support funding from the ICC to full members as opposed to associate members? And would that difference support a full time professional panel of players in Ireland on reasonable wages, plus some for ground & club development?

You can't turn back time but I'm often amazed when I read of the popularity of cricket in parts of rural Ireland in the 1800s. I see in a local history book on Graignamanagh in Co.Kilkenny that there were 50 club teams on the go in Kilkenny in 1895. There were up to 3 teams in Graig itself at one stage (Graig Shamrocks, Graig Home Rule Club, Graig Commercial Club) and neighbouring areas such as Grange, Coolyhune, Annalack, Clohastia, Ballycabus, Mount Loftus, Coolnabrone and Curragh all sported clubs! There were still 8 teams, including Graignamanagh playing in Kilkenny as late as 1947.

And what's that got to do with the modern game? I don't know but it does show that the game had the capacity to gain great support amongst ordinary Irish people.

riffmongous

BarryD wrote: »

Is it a 'chicken & egg' problem? What's the difference in support funding from the ICC to full members as opposed to associate members? And would that difference support a full time professional panel of players in Ireland on reasonable wages, plus some for ground & club development?

You can't turn back time but I'm often amazed when I read of the popularity of cricket in parts of rural Ireland in the 1800s. I see in a local history book on Graignamanagh in Co.Kilkenny that there were 50 club teams on the go in Kilkenny in 1895. There were up to 3 teams in Graig itself at one stage (Graig Shamrocks, Graig Home Rule Club, Graig Commercial Club) and neighbouring areas such as Grange, Coolyhune, Annalack, Clohastia, Ballycabus, Mount Loftus, Coolnabrone and Curragh all sported clubs! There were still 8 teams, including Graignamanagh playing in Kilkenny as late as 1947.

And what's that got to do with the modern game? I don't know but it does show that the game had the capacity to gain great support amongst ordinary Irish people.

The difference in funding is at least 7.5 million versus 1.5 mill, so obviously that would be worth quite a lot to a country like Ireland in the absence of state funding.

I used to live only a few miles away in inistioge and we had 3 clubs! Nowadays inistioge can barely support 1 Gaa club, only in combination with the rower

Rascasse

$7.5m? Something is going wrong if they are getting that much and can't pay their players, but from what I've seen they get the same $1.5m over 3 years that Ireland gets (from the TAPP fund). Is there more coming from somewhere else?

Edit: Just to say that that there isn't an absence of state funding for Ireland, they get funding from both the British and Irish governments through Sport NI and the Irish Sports Council.

riffmongous

Rascasse wrote: »

$7.5m? Something is going wrong if they are getting that much and can't pay their players, but from what I've seen they get the same $1.5m over 3 years that Ireland gets (from the TAPP fund). Is there more coming from somewhere else?

Edit: Just to say that that there isn't an absence of state funding for Ireland, they get funding from both the British and Irish governments through Sport NI and the Irish Sports Council.

I was under the impression that they get that 1.5 extra too as part of a 'development' program.. I pretty sure but always am open to correction though. There was an audit performed a few years ago http://www.espncricinfo.com/zimbabwe/content/story/343120.html and it found that there were 'serious financial irregularities' but 'no criminality' so nobody was to held accountable, the results were not very well received.

Ah, I didn't mean that we don't state funding, absence was too strong a word, I didnt think it was too much though compared to ICC money, do you have any idea of a figure Ras?

Rascasse

Something seriously wrong if Zim are getting $7.5m and an extra $1.5m. Time for the ICC to appoint someone to take over the administration of the cash.

Re. Ireland; They get about €1m from Sport NI and about €500k from ISC. They also get extra bits too, for example there was some funding from "The Gathering" for the England match.

riffmongous

Rascasse wrote: »

Something seriously wrong if Zim are getting $7.5m and an extra $1.5m. Time for the ICC to appoint someone to take over the administration of the cash.

Re. Ireland; They get about €1m from Sport NI and about €500k from ISC. They also get extra bits too, for example there was some funding from "The Gathering" for the England match.

Yeah that would be the smart thing to do but the ICC just doesnt want to get involved. In a way it is almost a pity the player strikes never end in a game being cancelled because then the ICC mght finally have to step in and do something about it

BarryD

As I say above, I know little of the politics of international cricket administration but I'd guess judging from this map anyway, that the southern hemisphere - Pacific Ocean countries must have pretty good control over affairs?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ICC-cricket-member-nations.png

You'd think it'd be in the interests of the game, if perhaps not their interests, to develop at least one other European full member?

djimi

BarryD wrote: »

As I say above, I know little of the politics of international cricket administration but I'd guess judging from this map anyway, that the southern hemisphere - Pacific Ocean countries must have pretty good control over affairs?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ICC-cricket-member-nations.png

You'd think it'd be in the interests of the game, if perhaps not their interests, to develop at least one other European full member?

The way I see it (and I may be completely wrong about this) is that the ICC are a completely self service organization who are mostly run by the test playing nations, who are more than happy to maintain the status quo as the more mouths they have to feed the less money there is to go around, and they are not prepared to give up their money to aid the development of associate nations like Ireland and assist us in our push for test status.

The whole organization is a complete shambles, run by dinosaurs who have no real interest in developing the game worldwide. You only have to look at their efforts to limit the world cup to just the test playing nations to see where their priorities lie.

BarryD

That's a depressing take on affairs - great pity, if so, for the finest bat & ball game.

HonalD

I'm not so critical of the ICC themselves but the Test members do not want to split the pot of money with anyone else so there is a limit to what Ireland can achieve.

There was talk of a two tier league but its like turkeys voting for Christmas. Also, talk of a Test Series Competition is farcical - it's completely nuts.

riffmongous

It all comes down to money really, if cricket suddenly became popular in china or america they would be fast-tracked to the top ASAP

Dozen Wicked Words

Good win today for them against Pakistan, first against a Test team other than Bangladesh since 2001.

riffmongous

So some news emerges that might shed some light on just why things are so bad about them financially
cricinfo

A protest over salaries by Zimbabwe's cricketers has again brought to the fore Zimbabwe Cricket's financial problems, which have continued despite at least US $9 million being loaned by the ICC to the board. ESPNcricinfo can reveal that one reason for the financial mess is that ZC's top leadership apparently used a $6 million loan from the ICC to enrich a bank on whose board they sit and ignored a key condition of the loan.

The issue also raises an apparent conflict of interest: ZC chairman Peter Chingoka, vice-chairman Wilson Manase and former managing director Ozias Bvute all sit on the board of Metbank, one of Zimbabwe's leading banks. While Chingoka is a non-executive director on the Metbank board, Manase is chairman of the board and Bvute is a major shareholder in the institution.

ZC said the main purpose for the ICC loan was to service the current facilities with local banks so that it could borrow again but the plan was upset by the status of the financial market. Chingoka also said it was "wrong and malicious" to allege loss of money when Metbank themselves were owed the most amount of money. The ICC, meanwhile, has declined to respond to specific questions....