While the West Indies were enjoying a day off taking in Africa’sbountiful wildlife on a tour of a game park outside Harare, India didthem a favour at the Queen’s Club yesterday

Tony Cozier28-Jun-2001While the West Indies were enjoying a day off taking in Africa’sbountiful wildlife on a tour of a game park outside Harare, India didthem a favour at the Queen’s Club yesterday.Their hard-fought victory over Zimbabwe, with four wickets and onlyfour balls to spare, ensured their place in the final of thetriangular Coca-Cola Cup series and all but guaranteed that the WestIndies would be their opponents come July 7.Zimbabwe’s third successive defeat left their hopes of stillqualifying resting on an unlikely sequence of events and furthercompounded the problems they have faced over the past week, on and offthe field.The West Indies would have to lose their two remaining matches againstIndia on Saturday and Wednesday and the other against Zimbabwe here onSunday to be level on two points with the home team.The finalists would then be determined on run-rate, and Zimbabwe wouldneed a massive victory on Sunday to erase what is now a considerabledeficit.Zimbabwean cricket is going through difficult times at present.The euphoria of an admirable victory over India in the second Testnine days ago to square the series has quickly evaporated through aprotest by senior players against the Zimbabwe Cricket Union’s (ZCU)selection policy and injuries that have sidelined Andy Flower andHeath Streak, their two finest players.Streak stepped down as captain prior to the opening match against theWest Indies last Saturday because he was upset that his opinions werenot being respected by a selection panel of six that did not includeeither him or the coach, the former Australian fast bowler, CarlRackemann.An accommodation was reached after an animated meeting between theparties that added captain and coach to the panel, increasing it to anunwieldy eight.There have also been squabbles over pay levels, notably in Englandlast year, that led to the emigration of two key players, MurrayGoodwin and Neil Johnson, to English county cricket. These have notyet been adequately solved, as the Zimbabwean dollar continues itsplunge in value and the game becomes more expensive to run.As in South Africa, the debate over the pace of selection purely onmerit against that based on the encouragement of the emerging blackcricketers the so-called affirmative action has also tended to divideplayers and administrators.Peter Chingkoka, the respected and very able black Zimbabwean whoheads the ZCU, has to lead with all the tact of a Kofi Annan to keepmatters on an even keel. The recent defeats would not have helped.With a pool of no more than 300 players to chose from, Zimbabwe havedone well to hold their own at Test and One-Day International level.But the game was previously restricted to the minority white and Asianpopulations and these are now dwindling through emigration in the wakeof political, social and economic turmoil.Development programmes aimed at carrying the game to the majorityblack population have been in place for some time and more blackplayers have made their way into the Zimbabwe team than into SouthAfrica’s since 1992 when they both gained Test status, South Africafor the second time.Several have come through the well-appointed academy and havebenefited from the excellent facilties in the main centres. Five ofthe Zimbabwe A team in the practice match against the West Indies onTuesday were black.Henry Olonga, the personable, articulate and successful fast bowler,was Zimbabwe’s first real black star cricketer. But he has drifted outof the limelight through injury. In Tatenda Taibu, the tiny, livewire,18-year-old wicket-keeper, they have an obvious personality who shouldbe a role model and inspiration for the hundreds of those youngschoolchildren now being introduced to the game.But what Zimbabwe cricket needs most of all right now is moreconsistent success on the field and patience, unity and understandingoff it. The two are intertwined.