Can Zimbabwe prosper with a squad which doesn’t include their star players?
With a lot of drama surrounding the upcoming Tri-Nation series in Zimbabwe – with the training boycott of players unpaid salaries and match fees from the tour of Sri Lanka last year – the cricket board has assured fans that it will settle the player’s demands by July 25th.
Despite the promise, not many have been willing to play the forthcoming tournament featuring two of the world’s strongest T20I sides, Pakistan and Australia, and could pull out on June 25th. This was further proved by the notable absence of Serene Williams, Craig Ervine, Brendon Taylor, and Sikandar Raza in the squad to play the T20I tri-series. Graeme Craemer is also nowhere to be seen after being sacked as captain in March.
Zimbabwe's players have given their board an ultimatum to pay outstanding salaries and match fees by June 25 https://t.co/Jrec98ggMa
— ESPNcricinfo (@ESPNcricinfo) June 5, 2018
Raza, who has been picked by the Montreal Tigers in the new born Canada’s T20 League, may have a suitable reason for his exclusion from the squad – which brings back Hamilton Masakadza and Elton Chigumbura in their team’s kit. A press release stated: “The selectors picked the squad from players who participated in the 20-over tournament involving two local sides, the Zimbabwe Select and Board XI, and Kenya.”
Players involved in competitive cricket abroad who made themselves available for selection were also considered. It was also mentioned that the squad had assembled for a training camp on Wednesday under new coach Lalchand Rajput (who is expected to start a new era of Zimbabwe Cricket after the nightmare in this year’s qualifiers), and will be trimmed to fifteen by Monday.
Zimbabwe Cricket is undergoing economic crises since the previous years and it is expected that the situation will settle down by July as Pakistan (currently top of the T20I rankings) and Australia (runner-up in the ICC T20I rankings) tour the country. Although the visitors make the series exciting, let’s hope Zimbabwe show strong resistance and play well. The series kick off on the 1st of July, and will run till the 8th, followed by an ODI matches series with Pakistan.