Why the obsession with cricket Coltart?

August 28, 2013

The Herald

By Isabel Mutekwa

28 August 2013


DURING his term as Education, Sport, Arts and Culture Minister, David Coltart, concentrated on cricket affairs he was dubbed the Minister of Cricket. Unless President Mugabe re-appoints him to that same portfolio in the next Cabinet, Coltart is the outgoing Education, Sport, Arts and Culture Minister.

But apparently he is not giving up his other appointment — the Minister of Cricket.

Only over the weekend he was singing from his familiar album, this time a track entitled “ZC Please Don’t Let the Players Walk Away,” published by ESPNcricinfo.

As if ZC is! As if ZC can!

Regrettably, we have to go into colour because this is what it is about.

Kyle Jarvis is not the first white cricketer to leave the country to play county cricket in England.

Andy Flower is on record, on the eve of the 2003 ICC Cricket World Cup, that he had set his sights on turning his back on international cricket and going to play county cricket in England.

But why doesn’t David know this considering that he has been counsel for Andy?

Didn’t David Houghton go to a county? And since then haven’t the likes of Travis Friend, Antony Ireland, Gary Balance also gone to a county?

What about Kevin Pietersen and a whole host of England cricketers who should be or should have been Proteas? David, you love the internet.

Please google Allan Lamb, the late Anthony William “Tony” Greig or just “South African cricketers who have done what Jarvis wants to do.”

In the global village, there is always a field where the grass is greener — or appears so!

And the movement from here to there is easier for those who can trace ancestry to those fields yonder.

And so they use our Under-19 or senior platform to advertise themselves to motherland, then follow their figures made in our name to wherever ancestry leads. — Isabel Mutekwa writes in her personal capacity.

“Comment:
It is unfortunate that the writer makes a racial issue out of this. If one reads the ESPN Cricinfo article it will be apparent that I express concern for all Zimbabwean professional cricketers irrespective of their race. She also very conveniently ignores the loss of both Henry Olonga and Tatenda Taibu. One wonders who the racist is!”