2023 ICC Men's T20 World Cup Africa Qualifier Regional Final

I believe there's also a program available to the Chinese where they bring in workers (essentially convicts) that can qualify for citizenship within 3 years as well. I stand to be corrected on this.

It is a 10 year naturalisation period, perhaps the longest in the world. I guess with all the people clamouring to get in here it's necessary. 😂

Actually in the early days there were hundreds of thousands of people trying to get here, so that ten year thing may have been Rhodesian legislation that carried forward.

Zanu learnt and perfected some nasty tricks from the Rhodies.

I was trying to ascertain how many people played cricket in Namibia. I think a lot of the white kids go to boarding school in SA, where of course the standard of school cricket is very good. If you take the overall number of people that played a good level of cricket at school I'll guarantee it exceeds the annual number of school leavers that finish school at the 6 cricket schools here. Of that number most of our boys then go overseas. There are literally about 5 cricketers a year here that come from the known cricket schools that stay in country and pretty much none of them pick up a bat again.

The high density school leavers have generally played a much lower standard and if they decide to continue with cricket they have a very steep learning curve to get through to even play Div 2 club cricket. Some bizarrely manage, showing the natural ability that's around.

I know it's old ground, but what made our cricket good was the number of school leavers that played good cricket that immediately joined a club, and stayed in-country and got a job. I think that's the Namibian model. Their club cricket of maybe half a dozen clubs is likely to be a lot stronger than ours.

That dynamic has changed here and most actually leave the country immediately to uni or just to travel and get a job overseas. The few that remain start drinking and fishing. The cricket culture amongst the whites is all but dead. ZC didn't totally expect all the whites to give up cricket almost overnight, but then thought the blacks would pick up the baton immediately. It was a grave miscalculation.

They're starting to, but there was a void of 25 years that has clearly been problematic.

It was around 2013/2014 that school cricket quality dramatically fell away. Prior to that there were a number of very good schoolboys. That I lay firmly on ZC's doorstep.

Even though club cricket was all but dead by then, there were still plenty of really good white kids enjoying cricket and vying for age group sides. When reality set in that they were competing for perhaps 2 or 3 spots max they realised the full futility of it. Plus ZC stopped touring to SA because somebody had stolen all the mula. The skullduggery I've witnessed is numbing. There's a long list of both black and white.

That coincided with a huge resurgence of water polo and schools cutting back dramatically on fixtures, particularly in the third term. Mostly because kids were cramming for vital exams with tutors because the quality of teaching has gone to hell. Kills me when these big schools proudly post their exam results yet 90% of their students were groomed for exams by tutors 😂 In my day you could fail O levels as many times as you liked. Guys stayed at school for an extra year or two if the school was going to tour 😂

You'd leave when you had kids to support.

There was a time when white buy-in was vital for success and it didnt happen. Now the numbers are so few and the interest so little that that bird has long since flown. It's now up to the black folk to rebuild and they're currently not up to the task. Most of that is due to a broken economy and systems, which was also inherited mostly intact, by the way.

It's hard to find excuses, but people manage.

If they can't fix soccer, the national sport, cricket has no chance. First step is to own your failures. Nobody really wants to fix anything, merely profit from it.

Plus of course the number of competitive schools has plummeted from about 20 down to half a dozen.

In hindsight it was basically The Perfect Storm of destruction. Its decades to build something valuable and maybe 2 years to irretrievably mess it up.

It's not just cricket, it's every single sport in this country that has gone straight down the toilet through horrific mismanagement, wholesale theft and unmitigated racism under the ridiculous guise of misguided quota, spite, venom, call it what you like. Its nothing new of course, been going on from the get go, but the new bosses took it to another level.

Somewhere along the line kids have gotten soft with helicopter parents hovering around making sure their little darlings get s**t they haven't earned or deserved as well. I'm talking not just the white community here either.

I once saw a young Prosper Utseya in a broken heap because he got denied a rightful spot in the u19 side. It puts s**t on your liver for sure. The trick is to fix it rather than return the favor. Takes a good man to do that, and it's a commodity we are short of across the board.

My era of schoolboy rugby used to run England schools very close. Oh how the mighty have fallen.

It's possible to slowly do some limited damage control and repair through commitment, fairness and transparency, but we'd never get even half way to what we had before... in any sport!! I'm ye to see anyone make a genuine meaningful attempt, it's all window dressing with an eye on the main prize which is unfortunately money. What happened to administrators that worked for free for the love of the game?

Worst case is we lose against Namibia and one other because its T20 and weird s**t can happen. Namibia may lose one or two. That would mean another team would have to be that dominant that they also only lost one or two.

That's very unlikely.

In theory we should beat Namibia, providing we bowl well up front. That Van Lungen guy is their main threat and he can be kept quiet by tight body-line bowling. He struggled against Ngarava, so Blessing hopefully is an additional problem for him. We then have an extra batter with Williams and possibly Marumani, if selected. They of course now have Wiese who is a threat with bat and ball.

mnelson68 wrote: ↑Tue Nov 21, 2023 9:27 am

Pat_Bee wrote: ↑Tue Nov 21, 2023 8:12 am

Tight bowling 😂 won’t get it from our guys unless Larry gets a start.

Larry shouldn't be anywhere near t20 games

If I recall, you also don’t rate Jongwe. And you (presumably, if you have any sense) don’t rate Mumba.

So who exactly do you propose picking? Someone has to bowl.

Chris Mpofu is still not to be sneered at, I tell you. Everyone wants to plan for the future, but if the man is still bowling well you can't take it away from him.

If Anderson can do it then so can Chris.

Not that I'm talking Larry down, he can have good days.

Then of course there's TK, if only he had more control.

Our next tier down seem to be Gwandu and Dube and maybe Falao has got something to offer. The first thing to do with Falao is get him on a good diet and get him in the gym, he's too skinny.

This convo becomes moot if Brad Evans makes a good return.