TapsC wrote: ↑Fri Aug 18, 2017 4:01 pm
This team is clearly better than us and also India walloping Sri Lanka really put things in perspective for me. We still have a very long way to go. Sri Lanka the West Indies Bangladesh Afghanistan and ireland are the teams we stand a chance against. India Australia South Africa England and New Zealand are way ahead. I'm not too sure how we would fare against Pakistan.
Actually, the South Africa A team that's giving India A a hiding is stronger than it needs to be, and this Emerging SA side is weaker than it could have been, so yes Zimbabwe is way behind.
I think Jason Smith is more SA Emerging, but he's turning out for the A side. But then again his recent performances against the England Lions put his progress into perspective. The likes of Budaza, Ngoepe, Mnyanda and Mgijima could have been here too, but most of them are just past that 25 years of age. Did any Zimbabwe ever face Ayabulela Gqamane? I doubt it but he'll be 28 years old soon and another with bags of talent. Sibonelo Makhanya was SA u19 captain. He captained Phehlukwayo, as well as most guys on this tour Christensen, Zuma and Malan when SA-u19 toured England a couple of years ago against the likes of Hameed. The top scorer on that day(Grant Roelofsen) is busy with his Varsity studies and a full Zimbabwe A side would struggle to beat an SA Varsity XI select.
Again the distortion in SA is that ZIM won't really get to face much of the top Black SA talent because it will make its debut quite young for the Proteas (just like Rabada, Ngidi and Phehlukwayo have done). I mean Ngidi played for the Proteas when he had barely played domestic cricket.
But what that also does is push out some top talent from the Proteas to accomodate them in the national side, then a lot of the genuine A team talent gets pushed out of the A team to accomodate guys like Cook and Miller, and all of a sudden SA has tens of players who refuse to play for the Emerging side because they are too good. For example Jason Smith is just 22 and has played just 50 odd Pro games in total(a few of them at 3day level). So the SA Emerging side could have and should have been much stronger. Even Christensen's 3-Day record is extremely poor, but he scored an easy ton against Shingi and Chinouya (maybe not as focused as they should have been, but still). Makhanya's record is just as poor and he would have scored heavily on this tour.
So again in many ways ZIM is regressing. Which is why the likes of Mashinge, Ngarava, Mumba, Burl and Musakanda should have been playing on this tour, just like Mavuta did. This would have been a better learning experience for them than that Rising Stars tour to England.
It's really sad for me to see Ngazibini Sigwili destroying the likes of Nel, Gumbie, Geyle, Burl, Myers, Lake and Handirisi (bowling better than Phehlukwayo and Rabada), yet a few years later for the right reasons KG, Phehlukwayo, Sigwili, Markram, Fortuin along with those two, are deemed too good for SA-EME, but strangely, at the same time Zimbabwe somehow feels Mumba and Burl are too good to be part of this tour, yet neither are even at the level of those SA players not part of this tour.