Zimbabwe Cricket orders inquiry into New Zealand debacle

February 13, 2012

New Zimbabwe

13 February 2012

Zimbabwe Cricket says it will launch an inquiry into the national team’s poor showing on a tour of New Zealand, which Sports Minister David Coltart has described as “disgraceful”.

Zimbabwe lost a one-off Test match by an innings and 301 runs before being whitewashed 3-0 in the One Day Internationals. Last Saturday, they suffered a seven-wicket defeat in the first of two Twenty20 matches.

ZC bosses have been forced to eat humble pie by stinging comments about the team’s performance, including by the Australian media.

In an editorial, the New Zealand Herald described Zimbabwe as “dreadful”, adding: “They are the worst side to tour this country, below even the poor Bangladesh outfits of the past five years. A lot of what we saw was no better than club cricket.”

Zimbabwe Cricket managing director Ozias Bvute defended Coltart’s right to criticise the team as “the relevant authority of sport and as a cricket fan”.

He added: “It would not be proper to try and find excuses as to what went wrong, save to apologise to the nation and assure our supporters that a full enquiry into our shortcomings will be made.”

Traditionally, Bvute said, Zimbabwe have never been good travellers, but even then they had hoped for “a more spirited display in all aspects of the game” on the New Zealand tour.

“…once the team return this week, we do have a reporting and review structure that allows us to do a post-mortem of the entire tour and we will then have a clearer picture of what led to Zimbabwe’s poor performance,” Bvute said in a statement.

He defended Zimbabwe Cricket against Coltart’s claims that sending 10 non-playing support staff on the tour was “top heavy”.

“The size of the touring party is determined by the needs of our team and the composition of our currently touring side is in fact at par with that of other cricketing nations embarking on tours of this nature,” Bvute argued.

“The ratio of technical staff to players is always kept at a balance that ensures that playing strategies can be enhanced when needed or specialist players brought in as was done in the case of Graeme Cremer and Propser Utseya.”