Yeah, agree with foreignfield. More cricket with better teams regularly would not necessarily mean we would have them get better over time. More hard work at the backyard day in and day out, and zero complacency could help though.
Having said that Williams is still quite ahead of Ervine in comfort and ease, and in an ideal world (where there are no periodic excursions by Williams out of the team, and constant correct selection by ZC - batting at 4 or 5 regularly for a decade and more) Williams would have been a 45+ average guy across formats and would have finished next only to Andy Flower in terms of stats and greatness. The guy oozes more class than any other post 2000 cricketer, including Taylor.
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[Match Thread] Zimbabwe vs Ireland - 3rd T20I -- EVERYBODY READ THIS!!!!
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Was just going to say, I would have loved to see these clubs on a hot Saturday afternoon in the 60’s and 70’s ☹️
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jaybro wrote: ↑Tue Jul 16, 2019 10:18 am
Kriterion_BD wrote: ↑Tue Jul 16, 2019 7:06 am
jaybro wrote: ↑Mon Jul 15, 2019 8:28 pm
I firmly believe that the players would be better if they played better sides more often
Zimbabwe played the 2nd highest number of ODIs in between the two World Cups from 2015-2019. Thats resulted in a 0-5 record against Netherlands and Ireland which I think surprised even the harshest of critics. In the same time frame, ZIM have lost 4 out of 5 series against Afghanistan, themselves struggling to win games against the best sides (0-9 in the just concluded World Cup).
For Zimbabwe, the problem has been largely threefold:
1) Limited talent. I doubt there were ever more than 5000 serious cricketers in the country. With those kinds of numbers, Zimbabwe are actually punching above their weight. Its a miracle the team has produced players like Flower bros, Streak, Price, et al.
2) Inability to maximize whatever talent they do have. Getting guys like Taylor, Ervine, Williams, Raza, Jarvis, Cremer, and Chatara to all fire at the same time. The inability of more than 2 of those guys to fire led to that loss against the UAE.
3) ZC problems. No need to write more since its been beaten to death here already.
I said play BETTER TEAMS more often
Once again not reading what others write
Afghanistan ARE a better side. Ireland ARE a better side. Players in their 30s won’t and can’t grt better regardless of who they play.
The issue is the players keep making the same mistakes over and over. Raza and Williams throw their wickets away both when set for a big score and when in single digits. Ervine blows hot and cold and Taylor often does as well. How many times have we seen compulsive sweeping be the downfall when all you had to do was knock the ball around for easy single?
By contrast, The young guys like Musakanda, Burl, Mavuta, can improve and develop by playing better sides. But sides like Netherlands or Scotland would be the “better sides” if we picked a ZIM squad minus the core of Taylor-Ervin’s-Williams-Raza.
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Universals was once a flourishing club.
Dave Houghton was involved with the cricket and Universals regularly played in the top competition with and against Internationals. A lot of the guys used to come play at the club. They had a really nice field and clubhouse, had built two practice nets that were brilliant, got some excellent quality bowling machines and plenty of training equipment. They even got all the field equipment required to maintain the fields and had full time groundsmen.
They also began building an Indoor centre which was to be used for Cricket, Hockey, and Football and would have a club house upstairs with some food places and a social area.
Tennis was being run by my family and we were playing in the top leagues too. Football ground was built and they installed solid sub benches and invested in equipment to maintain along with groundsmen. They even redid the golf course.
With all this success, certain people within the community began to push their way in and bring all their politics in to it. However, with the turn of the country, things changed too. Our family was one of many to leave. Tennis died. Cricket lost its key members. Golf was about the only thing maintained because eventually those people who wanted to push in, got in and began holding everyone to ransom. These people were golf people. They had money and could afford the sport. They would often go on golfing holidays to Zambia or Dubai and the such. One particular member who is in bed with ZANU put his wife in charge of the club. She did not like the fact that kids were playing football on the fields and so she put up fences to stop them and planted trees on the cricket field. She eventually turned the club in to her own little garden.
The cricket field is still there and maintained but no one really plays. Football is the only sport that continues. Tennis courts have been replaced by putt-putt. The indoor centre is basically a hall used for weddings and functions and has a restaurant that is open on weekends.
It's a sad sad state of affairs at the club.
Sunrise has pretty much gone down the same route. Other than social outings, no real sport is played there. They still have their fields, but it's not overly well maintained or anything. I remember India used to play warm up games there and use it for training. Far cry from that now. Sunrise also hosts the odd night club nights for Diwali or New Years.
Dave Houghton was involved with the cricket and Universals regularly played in the top competition with and against Internationals. A lot of the guys used to come play at the club. They had a really nice field and clubhouse, had built two practice nets that were brilliant, got some excellent quality bowling machines and plenty of training equipment. They even got all the field equipment required to maintain the fields and had full time groundsmen.
They also began building an Indoor centre which was to be used for Cricket, Hockey, and Football and would have a club house upstairs with some food places and a social area.
Tennis was being run by my family and we were playing in the top leagues too. Football ground was built and they installed solid sub benches and invested in equipment to maintain along with groundsmen. They even redid the golf course.
With all this success, certain people within the community began to push their way in and bring all their politics in to it. However, with the turn of the country, things changed too. Our family was one of many to leave. Tennis died. Cricket lost its key members. Golf was about the only thing maintained because eventually those people who wanted to push in, got in and began holding everyone to ransom. These people were golf people. They had money and could afford the sport. They would often go on golfing holidays to Zambia or Dubai and the such. One particular member who is in bed with ZANU put his wife in charge of the club. She did not like the fact that kids were playing football on the fields and so she put up fences to stop them and planted trees on the cricket field. She eventually turned the club in to her own little garden.
The cricket field is still there and maintained but no one really plays. Football is the only sport that continues. Tennis courts have been replaced by putt-putt. The indoor centre is basically a hall used for weddings and functions and has a restaurant that is open on weekends.
It's a sad sad state of affairs at the club.
Sunrise has pretty much gone down the same route. Other than social outings, no real sport is played there. They still have their fields, but it's not overly well maintained or anything. I remember India used to play warm up games there and use it for training. Far cry from that now. Sunrise also hosts the odd night club nights for Diwali or New Years.
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Kriterion_BD wrote: ↑Tue Jul 16, 2019 11:57 pm
Afghanistan ARE a better side. Ireland ARE a better side. Players in their 30s won’t and can’t grt better regardless of who they play.
The issue is the players keep making the same mistakes over and over. Raza and Williams throw their wickets away both when set for a big score and when in single digits. Ervine blows hot and cold and Taylor often does as well. How many times have we seen compulsive sweeping be the downfall when all you had to do was knock the ball around for easy single?
By contrast, The young guys like Musakanda, Burl, Mavuta, can improve and develop by playing better sides. But sides like Netherlands or Scotland would be the “better sides” if we picked a ZIM squad minus the core of Taylor-Ervin’s-Williams-Raza.
I've told you before you are a punish and I stand by that comment
I've also said before you don't read what others write properly before going off
Zimbabwe never gets to play Australia or England & they rarely play India or South Africa, all these ODI matches they've played since the 2015 WC have mostly been against Afghanistan. I'm not arguing that Afghanistan are better than Zimbabwe, but the point I made was I felt if they played the big sides more often they'd be better players and would likely play better against the likes of Afghanistan & Ireland.
My reasoning for this is going back to my early days of watching cricket, any side that came to Australia usually got pumped, but their next tours they usually performed very well. It's proven logic that exposure to a higher quality opposition will improve your skills.
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jaybro wrote: ↑Wed Jul 17, 2019 2:22 am
Zimbabwe never gets to play Australia or England & they rarely play India or South Africa, all these ODI matches they've played since the 2015 WC have mostly been against Afghanistan. I'm not arguing that Afghanistan are better than Zimbabwe, but the point I made was I felt if they played the big sides more often they'd be better players and would likely play better against the likes of Afghanistan & Ireland.
My reasoning for this is going back to my early days of watching cricket, any side that came to Australia usually got pumped, but their next tours they usually performed very well. It's proven logic that exposure to a higher quality opposition will improve your skills.
The same could be said of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Ireland and Netherlands. They rarely get to play against Australia or England or South Africa, and sporadically play India (Bangladesh only) and even then half the time its effectively an Indian A team (which is still strong enough to win most of the time). But all those teams have improved, for the 3 big reasons I highlighted earlier (# of serious players, talent, administration). The only teams that play ENG-AUS-IND-SA regularly are ENG-AUS-IND-SA! Even Pakistan doesn't play them at the same or even close to the same frequency.
Netherlands play even fewer games than ZIM has against "better sides", but they've still shown some degree of improvement. If ZIM were consistently beating the likes of Scotland, or Ireland, or Afghanistan, we might conclude more games versus even better sides might be of benefit.
The second issue is guys like Hamilton, or Craig, or Raza, or even Taylor can't improve by playing the top sides because they are well into their 30s. The idea that anyone can improve their game simply by taking on the best seems like one of those "too good to be true" magic solutions. Do you really feel that the only thing preventing me from becoming a decent tennis player is not enough ass whoopings from Federer or Djokovic?
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Looks like the opening post of this thread was correct!
This could well be the last time Zimbabwe played cricket. :roll:
This could well be the last time Zimbabwe played cricket. :roll:
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ShareI would like to reply to this post but I am not allowed to because I have not posted 10 posts - so this is another
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A guy on that twitter feed calling Hammy Ma-Duck-adza 😂
That might stick.
That’s pretty outspoken of Taibu. Don’t forget that recorded telephone conversation between him and Hamilton, that’s going to come back and bite Hammy.
That might stick.
That’s pretty outspoken of Taibu. Don’t forget that recorded telephone conversation between him and Hamilton, that’s going to come back and bite Hammy.
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That’s how Williams, Ervine and a couple of others would bat most of the time if they played international cricket more regularly. It gave me great comfort to see how at ease they were and how well they played.
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Hammy’s disastrous form with bat and captaincy must be the longest in cricket history without being axed. Right there tells you about these ZC guys and their desperation to keep control. It also tells you that Hammy has been part of their inner circle for how long? Not that we didn’t know that. I like the dude, despite his double dealing, and he’s respected in world cricket, but he needs to call time, or he may find it gets done for him, and that’s an ignominious departure for someone with such a long career. He can go and get advice from Ray Price on how to bow out without a benefit year, what’s good for the goose....
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And he really would have a role in Zim cricket going forward.
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Hamilton messed up if his intention was to prolong his career. Had he not been the captain, he would have been dropped a while ago, or at least midway through this series, and would have at least avoided the public ire against him. He could have gone back, piled on the runs domestically and could have come back again by the next important series as he always does. And a lot of us fans anyway felt that he was dropped more regularly and harshly over the years compared to a few others in the team. By choosing to accept captaincy, he made himself more visible and vulnerable to more intense scruitiny (which is well founded) and he had nowhere to hide.
An alternate explanation to his accepting captaincy last year knowing that the above could happen is if he did not mind getting into this situation at all, already knowing his time was already up and used the captaincy to prolong his career for almost another year now.
Either way, a death blow to his career, while he could have still been genuinely useful in tests if we ever played one in the near future. A drop now could be the end of the career, even if tests do come around. He also massively contributed to his own decline by not rolling his golden arm over more frequently than what he did in the last couple of years.
An alternate explanation to his accepting captaincy last year knowing that the above could happen is if he did not mind getting into this situation at all, already knowing his time was already up and used the captaincy to prolong his career for almost another year now.
Either way, a death blow to his career, while he could have still been genuinely useful in tests if we ever played one in the near future. A drop now could be the end of the career, even if tests do come around. He also massively contributed to his own decline by not rolling his golden arm over more frequently than what he did in the last couple of years.
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A couple of ramblers on Facebook are defending him in the basis that people didn’t have the knives out in the same way for other batsman like Ervine when out of form, but for any of those guys reading this, it’s not a valid comparison.
Being out of form at 30 or even 33 is much different from being an unfit 36 year old who hasn’t had a decent knock in two years. Being old in itself isn’t a killer to a career when out of form, although it would be in say, Oz, but the fact he’s old, not performing and unfit... there’s no justification for keeping him when we need to start blooding youth soon.
So two things have to happen from here.
Selectors put a bullet in him and put the dog down,
Or,
They strip the captaincy at the very least, and give him one more series to find his feet without the added pressure, completing the longest stretch of not getting dropped in cricket history.
This is a bare minimum to relinquish his captaincy. He isn’t the first Dunno to fail with that added pressure, but it’s make or break now.
One series to get back. If he is lucky.
Being out of form at 30 or even 33 is much different from being an unfit 36 year old who hasn’t had a decent knock in two years. Being old in itself isn’t a killer to a career when out of form, although it would be in say, Oz, but the fact he’s old, not performing and unfit... there’s no justification for keeping him when we need to start blooding youth soon.
So two things have to happen from here.
Selectors put a bullet in him and put the dog down,
Or,
They strip the captaincy at the very least, and give him one more series to find his feet without the added pressure, completing the longest stretch of not getting dropped in cricket history.
This is a bare minimum to relinquish his captaincy. He isn’t the first Dunno to fail with that added pressure, but it’s make or break now.
One series to get back. If he is lucky.
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What’s weird is although at the moment he’s been bulletproof and avoided the axe, in world record territory, it wasn’t always the case.
He used to have a reputation of being dropped unfailing and prematurely. Think he missed the 2011 World Cup even?
He used to have a reputation of being dropped unfailing and prematurely. Think he missed the 2011 World Cup even?
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Googly wrote: ↑Mon Jul 15, 2019 3:27 am
That’s how Williams, Ervine and a couple of others would bat most of the time if they played international cricket more regularly. It gave me great comfort to see how at ease they were and how well they played.
While I share the sentiment (re: comfort & ease), it's an illusion to think Ervine and Co. would be much improved and more consistent batsmen if they played more against good teams. Ervine is in one of his golden patches where he looks a million dollars, but as far as my memory serves me these stretches of good form mostly ended not through inactivity but when facing opposition with a good attack who did their homework and targeted his weaknesses. This of course applies to all our batsmen--if we are honest none of them would survive a full Test series against one of the top sides with their confidence intact.
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I firmly believe that the players would be better if they played better sides more often
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