New Zimbabwe.Com
By Tavengwa Mukhulani
2 November 2015
Below is an article by Zimbabwe Cricket chair Tavengwa Mukhulani on former sports minister David Coltart’s continued involvement with the sport.
ZIMBABWE Cricket and I have noted with serious concern David Coltart’s unfortunate remarks in a Facebook post accusing ZC of racism for making changes in the senior national team’s backroom set-up that resulted in batting coach Andy Waller losing his job while bowling coach Douglas Hondo was redeployed to the Zimbabwe A side.
Coltart’s views are misplaced. We are not in the business of rewarding effort, we reward results. We do not consult him who we hire and fire. And as a matter of policy, we do not discuss employee issues in the media beyond making necessary announcements. Coltart does not need to be satisfied by our actions. The statistics he is quoting, are not good enough to win us games. They are just numbers. They may be right in term of statistics, but that does not win us matches.
The scurrilous allegations that Coltart has made will not force us to deviate from the norm. Suffice to say, we as the custodians of the game of cricket in Zimbabwe have the prerogative to make decisions that we believe will take the sport forward.
And when we make changes to our coaching structures, we do not consider one’s skin colour as Coltart alleges. ZC has approached Grant Flower to come back home and take up the batting coach position. Grant, however, indicated that he was serving his contract in Pakistan until July 2016. And again we do not need to seek Coltart’s approval on that. And it must be noted that when he left ZC, the Board did not get rid of him as is being alleged by Coltart. He resigned to take up a coaching position in Pakistan.
Alistair Campbell resigned according to the communication that he sent. He had personal frustrations stemming from unfulfilled promises that had been made to him by then chairman Wilson Manase. He said the final nail on the coffin was that his son had not been selected in the Under-19 squad for the World Cup. He was also frustrated that ZC had not appointed his son’s coach within its structures.
Campbell then proposed to be a consultant to ZC, working three months in a year earning a huge monthly salary, with school fees being paid for his children at Falcon, three regional trips and three international trips per year. This proposal was denied by ZC.
Coltart claims that the current board removed key responsibilities from Campbell. The only change is that domestic cricket was assigned to the Game Development department and rightfully so because domestic cricket falls under development.
The Manase board had created the post of Director Game Development without assigning the responsibilities. And, so when the new board came in, it had to assign the domestic cricket function to the new director of Game Development. The commercial aspect was never taken away from him. Even if any responsibility had been taken from Campbell we cannot work on the basis of comments from the gallery.
ZC must be able to evolve on its own. All the black players that Coltart boasts were coached by Stephen Mangongo and simply because Mangongo is black he cannot give him that credit. Taibu, Chigumbura, Masakadza, Sibanda, Utseya, Chibhabha were coached by Mangongo.
Coltart only knew them when they were in the national team whereas Mangongo knew them when they were in Grade Three facing resistance from the same people that he said should take over ZC.
And where was Coltart? Are these players not a product of a sound development system?
The problem with Coltart is that he thinks an ex-cricketer is only a white player. For instance he gave the famous interim chairman Manase the instruction to engage Stuart Carlisle, John Rennie, Ray Price, Heath Streak, Wayne James.
Any names suggested outside Coltart’s bank of white cricketers is incompetent, not good enough. In one of his instructive emails to Manase, he suggested that Taibu be brought in as a selector so that the race card would not be played and that Manase would not appear to be an Uncle Tom.
Manase was on the ZC board since 2006. He became vice-chairman in 2011 and interim chairman in July 2014. How is it that all of a sudden Manase was never part of the decision-making process for all this time he was on the ZC board? How does he, all of a sudden, become dissociated with all the decisions of the previous boards?
The only reason why Manase would be a good chairman is that he took orders from Coltart. For example, soon after his appointment as interim chairman of the ZC board he was given a four-point action plan by Coltart through a lengthy email which is in my possession.
The action plan started by firing Mangongo, then national team coach, before the World Cup. Manase worked as Coltart’s subordinate at Legal Resources Foundation and as his protégé he can only believe in him and no one else. If Coltart is sincere about fighting racism in ZC we would have expected to get a similar lengthy article from him responding to Vermeulen after he called black cricketers ‘apes’.
Queens Sports Club and Harare Sports Club immensely benefitted from hosting the 2003 World Cup but surprisingly the person who claims he stands for cricket vigorously fought for New Zealand, Australia and England not to come and play here citing human rights abuses as if denying the locals from watching cricket played here was not in itself an abuse of human rights.
The current board, which he points as racist and claims wants to destroy cricket, made the following proposals for appointments:
1 Trevor Gripper to be on the cricket committee and he turned down the offer.
2 Ray Price to be on the cricket committee and to be the Under-19 specialist bowling coach and he turned down the offer.
3 We have approached Whitestone primary school to give us representation on the development committee and the offer was turned down.
4 Ruzawi has declined to give us their coach for national Under-13.
5 St George’s declined for their school to serve on the development committee.
6 Gregory Lamb was offered the appointed Under-19 batting coach post and he has taken up the post.
It would appear that to Coltart the only thing that is deemed correct is when a black man appoints a white man. Racism is only racism when Coltart feels that a white man has been hard done.
He has been silent about Prosper Utseya and Vermeulen. Can Coltart become just an ordinary cricket fan like everyone else and stop being an administrator, coach and selector? He quotes many times that he has been advised — as who?
Coltart is at liberty to contest in any portfolio and become an administrator or apply for these jobs rather than make unjustified conclusions.
Tavengwa Mukhulani is the chairman of Zimbabwe Cricket board.