Ervine wants to play for England

I don't think Ireland will create a FC competition of less than four teams in 2015, and with most of their top players likey to be in County cricket at the time anyway, one can comprehensively argue that beyond two teams, they really have no players who merit FC action! Should they be limited to just 2 teams?

Zim has a growing population of cricekters, and as I once pointed out, enough good FC seamers&spinners to cater for over 6 FC teams! With national team players, the middle order plus wicket-keepers are covered as well. The only problem are openers! We look weak in the top three, because most of the senior players dread it. Force them to occupy those positions, and you'll see how the youngsters being introduced to bat at positions 5&6 will thrive!

The resurrection of Club cricekt should not come at the expense of FC development. With talk of countries like Uganda having a FC system, you want Zim to drop a side? come on guys, the demand for cricekt in ZIm is very high among th eblack population! If Full Members are increasingly getting bowled for under 100 with alraming frequency, the Rocks can be forgiven fro doing the same! At least they are no the only ones getting bowled out twice in one day over a 3day Test match in which one of the days was 'entirely' lost to rain! They've got Taibu, Vermeulen, Panyangara & Vitori, while the likes of Mupariwa idle around at the Tuskers!

What we need is even distribution of players! I(& a lot of us here) can quite easily come up with competitive squads of 15 for each of the six sides, excluding County players! It's a traversty that the Rocks don't have overseas pros, while the rest do. The scale is simply not even, so we should not use their performances as an excuse to cull the teams!

Not too long ago the very same unqualified players you refer to bowled out the best FC team in the country for 177! Give them a couple of decent batsmen and might see 200+ score from them more often.

Jemisi wrote:

brmtaylor.com admin wrote:When I read this my first concern was that it was Craig Ervine. I'm glad it's not... with Sean it always seemed to be the case anyway.

I worried that too

but he's not getting in the Zim side!?? anyway, are we still talking about Sean? ... i'm sure there's an ECF somewhere for that

Jemisi wrote:I cant see how you can argue for an extra team Hhm. Fine if you dont want to drop one - neither do I, but adding a sixth will water things down, especially when the test players are away

Like I said, it's funny how people constantly make these claims that competitoin will be weakend, yet no one makes an individual attempt to compile 90 whollly local players and evenly distribute them among the six teams, then factor in at least 12 overseas pros who are often part of the Logan Cup. That's 102 players! Take out 15 national squad players, and you're left with 87. No need to dip into club cricket to make up the 3, unless you have to!

Challenge yourself to perform a similar exercise yourself and you'll find that it's more than feasible! Only the Hre-Byo influence needs to be broken to ensure our Logan Cup is competitive. Not a reduction of teams or a refusal to increase them to six!

In just the Tuskers alone we have Mpofu, Querl, Ncube, Mupariwa, Meth & Staddon! At any given day you don't need to field more than 3 seamers plus a spinner for FC matches! That's a surplus of 3 Zim A standard bowlers! The same can be said about the Eagles, Rhinos and even Mountaineers!

It's better to have 6 competitive teams at roughly the same level, instead who at full strength, are far too strong for the rest! That's how you create competition and breed better performances!

Craig Ervine is not smart enough nor good enough to do well in County Cricket. SO whether he likes it or not, he's stuck in Zim. Unless he demands to bat at 3 or four, and racks up huge scores, Mutizwa will continue to have a big argument! I don't remember seeing Regis or Tino do anything notable over the past two seasons in the Logan Cup in order for them to merit such inclusion, but they're doing ok in international cricket. Crag did, but still got dropped(after doing the opposite in international cricket), while Waller & Forster have gone away and scorer runs. Ewing is doing the same, so unless he's a solution to #3 ahead of Hami in Tests, or a better bat than Waller in the middle order, I don't see him getting a chance for either format anytime soon!

eugene wrote:If a mediocre Matsi can get back in the side it should be pretty easy for Craig to get back in. Craig has already contributed more to the national side in his brief career than Matsi has in the last 10 years.

Those Series were against Bangladesh and weakened teams from Full Members. That's what most of you guys forget!

Just like Forster, his FC average gave the impression that he would be a top international batsmen, but we're got more of the same of what the older guys did. Our players need to apply themselves more.

What we need to do is stp comparing now with then! Then was poor, but justified, now is poor but not justified. One and a half goals on the Swedish/Norwegian Football leagues = one goal in the Premiership, Laliag etc. Most of our performances now are worth less than then. We reached the final of a TriSeries against SL&Ind. No way we would've beat India, and a full strength NZ, would've crushed us Byo as well, not as thorough as McLean Park, but similar! Pak effectively beat without putting the foot on the pedal!

hhm wrote:An odd number of teams, plus long layoffs/periods of inactivity(sometimes over a month) due to byes, are what's affecting our players. It's almost two seasons now, and I believe the Rocks would be a better team if they were consistently playing 10-15 FC matches per season!

As it stands, there is very little club cricket if at all, so how do they stay match fit!

We need a sixth team to even things out. The amount of money being spent in short contracts, and boarding for overseas players, can be used towards a sixth team. More funds will be needed, but I think inflows will gradually improve!

My Academy XI anyone?

Are you aware that an Academy XI is not purely a selection of fringe players put together and referred to as an 'Academy XI', but actually an academy(centre) which literally enrols, houses & trains players, but but offers them no financial incentive/reward for their perfromance in matches?

Here are the drawbacks:

- we do not have sufficient funds to maintain the facilities

- attract upt to 3 top coaches and remunerate them accordingly

- pay support staff

- players have already played FC cricket, why would they agree to be enrolled into some centre

- cricket is a career now to most of them, losing that income means they are not able to support themselves;

- if they are still paid as well as they are being paid right now, while at the Academy, the costs make your suggestion far too expensive for consideration that a 6th team is more feasible.

Bottomline is:

- Ozias has reiterated that they want to increase the number of people playing cricket in Zimbabwe (NOT DECRREASE IT!), that can only be acheived by adding another franchise.

- if a franchise is dropped it wont be as a result of the Rocks or poor domestic cricket or it's competitiveness. It will be due to the poor performances which are constantly being put out by the "new guys", on top of the incosistencies of the senior established guys. Yes, the fortunes of the national team are what ultimately what dictates the changes that need to be made, and on current form - it's pathetic! ALLROUND!

The man couldn't by any number of runs in two consecutive Stanbic Pro20 competitions in Zimbabwe, in 2009 and 2010. He was at the pick of his career back then.

Why he thinks he could even sniff a chance at an England jersey is beyond me. Good luck to him. Hahahha 😂 . Pity the Bangladesh franchise who bought a name instead of a player