Another Zimbabwean trashing
After buying some goodies at the Avondale market, we went down to Harare Sports Club to witness another good Zimbabwean trashing, this time by the Australian cricket team.
If you’re only a marginal fan of cricket, you still have to have lived outside of this solar system to have missed the news on Zimbabwean cricket from the last couple of months. Fifteen white players withdrew or got kicked out, depending on whose version you believe, after they refused to play when the Zimbabwean Cricket Union (ZCU) decided that the national Zimbabwean cricket team needed to consist of a minimum of 50% blacks, regardless of their past performance. This resulted in a truly crappy team playing Sri Lanka some weeks ago.
Although initially the International Cricket Union (ICU) claimed the issues surrounding Zimbabwean cricket were internal and of no relevance to the ICU, they somehow changed their position and, last week, demanded changes to the Zimbabwean cricket team. Suddenly, five of the fifteen players were asked to return, but in the end only two came back.
Nevertheless, the ICU made sure the two test matches were to be canceled, so they ended up only playing the three ODIs, in which Zimbabwe was, well, humiliated.
Not that it had any effect on the mood at Harare Sports Club this Saturday, during the third and last ODI. Nice and warm (in the sun, at least), we enjoyed drinks and food while some people were throwing bowls at each other on some grassy pitch close to where we were sitting.