It's not cricket!

Zimbabwe's cricketers make us proud - but our minister bowls himself out for a duck

It began as a rather casual interview on a long and not very busy afternoon. I called the Zimbabwe Minister of Education, Sports and Culture, Eaneas Chigwedere, to talk cricket. Zimbabwe's XI had just been knocked out of the ICC's Twenty20 Cricket World Cup in South Africa, but the team had performed with spirit, and I hoped Chigwedere would talk positively about a possible revival of the game in the country.

Positive talk? I should have known better. What I got was a diatribe, an outburst, a volcano of bile and bitterness that exploded down the telephone line and threatened to singe my ear. And from the torrent of heated words I gathered that the Minister had worked out exactly why our boys came home early.

Conspiracy!

"Of course it was a conspiracy," he yelled. "Why else were we put in Group B, with England and Australia? I knew they would conspire against us, and that is what they did, isn't it! Everyone knows that those two countries are our enemies."

Was the minister really saying that Australia and England conspired first to get Zimbabwe in their group, and then conspired again to make sure the team was knocked out? Yes he was.

So once again nothing that goes wrong for Zimbabwe - the economy, health care, food shortages, fuel shortages - nothing is ever the fault of Zimbabwe. Everything is always the fault of the wicked Brits, and in this case, the crafty Aussies. It would be funny if it wasn't quite so sad.

And it is disappointing, too, and - dare I say it? - unpatriotic. A minister of less blinkered vision would actually be proud of the way the team played, instead of producing totally barking theories about conspiracies.

Because the lads did well. Ask any cricket follower. The Zim team has had its problems, what with emigration, quotas, finance, etc. But it turned up at Newlands Stadium in Cape Town and shocked the life out of mighty Australia, winning by five wickets. Some conspiracy!

Then they played England's twenty20 specialists, and came second by 50 runs, but were not disgraced. And only the complex mathematics of scoring rates, etc., meant that in the end our lads lost out.

So on behalf of everyone who reads this site, I would like to congratulate the Zimbabwe cricket team on an excellent show. We won't ask Minister Chigwedere to join in. He'd only say we were conspiring against him.

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