2019/20 Domestic Cricket Season - Logan Cup, Pro50, Twenty20

TapsC wrote: ↑Mon Sep 16, 2019 6:32 am

The short to medium term solution is to find players who play in other domestic leagues. That is the only way out.

I think sometimes we overestimate ourselves. We have never had a strong domestic setup. In fact if you look back you will find that Zimbabwe's strongest team had 2 very good imports (Goodwin and Johnson). After those 2 guys packed their bags we went back to being an ordinary team.

Mate the domestic setup was way stronger, go back through the archives, they played more games and the sides were filled with national team players and promising youngsters coming through.

That was actually a massive advantage Zimbabwe had when it came to bringing young guys through the system, players like Coventry, Elton, Hamilton, BT, Taibu etc were playing first class cricket against guys like Streak, Flowers etc when they were still teenagers ( IIRC Choppa & Elton might have been 16)

The trick was they didn’t have a system clogged up with ‘never gonna make it’ club cricketers, it was mostly quality experienced guys or good young players. Now the national team players barely play, the age group stars are kept in school (because their parents know its a waste time them playing) and the teams are full of club hacks who just want an espncricinfo page.

Very well put.

There’s some serious passengers in this FC set up and it needs addressing.

encore wrote: ↑Mon Sep 16, 2019 5:41 am

eugene wrote: ↑Sun Sep 15, 2019 10:18 pm
Most of the domestic season will be rained out or cancelled due to fuel shortages.

Unfortunate part of it all.

There you go again!!

How’s it unfortunate?? It rains between November and February, and it has done for several thousand years.

It should be called no planning, but in this case they’ve planned it.

And yes it was damned strong club cricket, probably the toughest club cricket in the world, because we focused on that as opposed to the provincial stuff. Sometimes you’d find 7 or 8 National players in a club side.

The days of making club and franchise cricket more interesting and competitive with imports has long gone.

The last guy we had here at Rhinos was a decent club cricketer and made a couple of appearances in minor counties yet he set it alight here. What does that tell you?

Ed Byrom played a few games as well, but aside from one innings didn’t do much, but he’s a different player now, he’d put some monster runs on the board. He’s become a serious cricketer, watch this space, he’s in the upper echelons of batsmen right now. His time is coming.

I remember watching Greatbatch playing for OG’s. He was some player.

If you walk around the OG’s bar and see who played there, you could almost make up a World XI. No jokes.

What's the state of Old Georgians now googly? Are there any grounds which you can honestly say are still in half decent nick apart from OH

OG’s is good. Some money has gone into it and it’s still in good nick and the clubhouse has had a makeover.

They would be a great inclusion to our club system but the committee is not interested.

I’m not sure who’s behind it all. They play some social cricket there and I suspect those guys help.

Gary Brent is based there as well, perhaps with the AC Academy now so if that’s their base then it definitely won’t be available for club cricket.

I’m a bit out of touch these days, rapidly and thankfully losing interest in the ongoing dog show that is our cricket.

They play rugby out of there and I think the rugby section have a lot to do with the upkeep as well.

It’s how it all used to work, before the freebies became the order of the day.

Comparing Duckett to Willie and LJ highlights a lot of the problems we face with wrong perceptions. I like the way WM plays his cricket and I do think LJ is (was? Haven’t seen him for a while) very talented, but there’s just no comparison. I shudder to think how many high quality games Duckett must have played, how much quality coaching he’s had and how many good youngsters he was better than along the way to get himself into the position he’s in. There will literally be several hundred guys of the same caliber as WM and LJ. Duckett is in the upper echelons of quality English batters.

I’m not saying our two don’t have the capacity to be really good but they’ve missed out on about 500 games and 7 years of quality coaching, you just ain’t catching that up.

Our decks here are far from flat, they can be very spicy, that’s an incorrect statement.

100% a side in some division or other in SA that we can label our A side would be a real win. It’s absolutely our cheapest option, but it’s still not free and ZC don’t have the organizational ability to keep a side there the whole season. If we let that league down once with a no show we’d not get another chance.

Keeping decent kids here is the big one. A disproportionate number of the good players come from the better schools and they try and get to a university.

Having said that ZC have to play the hand they’re dealt and must incorporate the good youngsters that are prepared to stay, or have no options.

I thought the AC Academy was our “official” one and GB has done a fantastic job.

As stated we have to keep the franchise thing going to tick the boxes, but send the better guys to SA if they will even have us, it’s absolutely our best option.

If they bury the hatchet with Taibu they could send kids to U.K. on a “gap year” playing cricket. If anyone really good materialized he may consider cricket instead of Uni.

I’d like to see a few ZC scholarships, not only to local schools but maybe a prize one to a top English school with a water tight contract so he doesn’t run.

If you've seen them both bat then fair enough, at least you've come to your own conclusion based on an eye witness account. I too have seen both bat in the flesh, in white and red ball cricket, and in my opinion Kazuza is totally inferior to Duckett and would struggle against top quality opposition.

People on this forum don't think you're stupid, either. What frustrates the forum is your continued bias and twisting of facts and figures to suit your agenda. You've added some spice to forum at least and that's always a good thing

Can you really sit & claim a player who can’t even crack the Zimbabwe side, not even once in any format is better than a guy who’s actually played for England & picked up numerous T20 contracts around the world, and still claim not be stupid ??

You’re either stupid or biased or maybe a bit of both 😂😂😂

Googly wrote: ↑Tue Sep 17, 2019 5:13 pm

As stated we have to keep the franchise thing going to tick the boxes, but send the better guys to SA if they will even have us, it’s absolutely our best option.

If they bury the hatchet with Taibu they could send kids to U.K. on a “gap year” playing cricket. If anyone really good materialized he may consider cricket instead of Uni.

I’d like to see a few ZC scholarships, not only to local schools but maybe a prize one to a top English school with a water tight contract so he doesn’t run.

This doesnt work. They just get lost to the UK.

What eventuates is these kids end up on audition for UK and county clubs.

Last time, 2 months in we lost Blessing to them.

Lots of factors went into that, but at the end of the day we just set him up o establish roots there, which he did, and alot of negotiation occured.

So imagine if someone excels?

England are notorious for taking talent away from Africa, conditions are created that make it easy for clubs and players to go shopping on each other.

Plus Duckett is only 85th in SA 😂

Do an online Rorschach Test and get onto that lithium