On Saturday 5 February the Zimbabwe Board XI met Free State B inthe final of the UCBSA Bowl competition at Harare Sports Club
John Ward09-Feb-2000On Saturday 5 February the Zimbabwe Board XI met Free State B inthe final of the UCBSA Bowl competition at Harare Sports Club.The nerve of the home side’s top order batsmen failed them, butthanks to a fine 51 by Dirk Viljoen they came close beforeeventually going down by 5 runs. Here Dirk talks to John Wardabout the match, and also contributes some interesting ideas onfuture developments in cricket in Zimbabwe.Match scores: Free State B 195/9 (45 overs); Zimbabwe Board XI190 all out (43.1 overs). Full scores and match reportLINKSJW: Dirk, first of all could you review how the Board XI havedone so far this season, please.DV: We did have a good season, but our three-day cricket was abit disappointing. I think the main reason was that otherprovinces knew we had international players in our side, and Ithink their game plan when they played us was to look for a draw.We had a good side, but we never got the results to prove it.But in a lot of the games we played, the other teams killed thegame. They never gave us a target to chase, and unless weactually bowled them out there was no chance we could make a gameof it.There were a few games we could have lost; we did lose againstNatal, and against Gauteng we were lucky to escape with a drawbecause we batted badly in the second innings. But in gamesagainst Border and Easterns, they didn’t even make a game of it;they just killed the game. So we disappointed in thethree-dayers, but we lacked a bit of discipline as well. Wedidn’t bat too well in many of our games, maybe played a few toomany shots too early, and no one got any big scores. I think inthe whole season we only got two or three hundreds, compared tolast year, when we won the league and got seven or eighthundreds.In the one-day matches, I personally feel we were much too strongfor most of the other sides; it’s just a pity we played so badlyagainst Free State. I still feel that we were the better side onpaper; we had more experience than they did, and we should havebeaten them. Fair dues to them – they played better on the dayand they deserved to win. I don’t feel we did ourselves justice.JW: How has your personal form been for the Board XI thisseason?DV: A bit disappointing. I got a 60 against Natal and thentwenties and thirties; I got starts but didn’t go through. I gota fifty against Northerns and a seventy against Gauteng. From apersonal point of view I thought I should have scored more runsand done better. Looking at my performance last year, I had areally good season then. But it came together towards the end ofthe season: in my last three games for the B side I hit threefifties and two thirties. My technique wasn’t quite right at thebeginning of the season: I had a few problems, my feet weren’tmoving properly, and it took me a long time to sort it out. Itshowed, and because of that I wasn’t selected for any games forthe national side.But it looks like it’s coming back: in my last five innings,including club games, I’ve scored five fifties in a row now.Hopefully I can carry on this form to the end of the season,Logan Cup and whatever happens, if I get chosen for the nationalside. If I don’t, I’ll go overseas and play.JW: And this match against Free State, when did you first hearwho the opposition were going to be, and the venue?DV: We had quite a good idea it was going to be here, as we haddone really well and our run rate was high. If anybody else wasgoing to be awarded a home match in preference to us, they wouldhave had to have won all their games and also had a higher runrate.We thought it was going to be Western Province, but about tendays before the game I got a phone call from the Zimbabwe CricketUnion and we were told it was Free State.JW: What were preparations for the match like?DV: I don’t think our preparation was that great; the rain cameat the wrong time. We had finished playing our season last yearon 20 November, and we were then off until after Christmas, whenwe had one game against Northerns and after that nothing. Wewere practising a lot of field work, a lot of running, and theguys were fit. But I think we lacked match preparation. We hadno match practice on good wickets; we practised on the Astroturfwhich is good practice, but not the same as a proper wicket. I’mnot making excuses for our loss, but that could have been thereason for our not performing as well as we should.JW: Were there any of the Free State team who before the matchyou knew that you had to watch out for?DV: Yes, a couple of guys; a couple had been brought down fromtheir A side –Morne van Wyk had played a couple of games for thefirst team; Jonathan Beukes had played well in the first team;Louis Wilkinson who hadn’t played in their A side this season buthas a huge amount of experience; van der Wath and Sokel Cilliershave been in and out of their A side. So these are the guys weknew about and we had game plans to curb their play, butobviously it didn’t go according to plan.We saw from the games against Sri Lanka and Australia that thewicket did a bit early on. Our game plan was to bowl first, keepthem down to a low score and chase. We have such a long battingline-up that we backed ourselves to get any score they got.During the game we were a bit concerned; we felt they werescoring too many runs. We bowled them out for 195, but I think170 or 180 would have been a better score for us on there, with aslow outfield.It was a difficult wicket to play on, but when lunch came theguys were confident. We had been averaging 250 for the seasonwhen batting and I think the guys were prepared. We thought wecould get the score. Maybe we were a bit too excited and weplayed a few too many shots first up, lost a few wickets and itwas quite a struggle from there.JW: At least in the Free State innings you never let a majorpartnership develop; you kept breaking through whenever onelooked to be in the offing.DV: That’s right. But if you look at the scorecard, barring ourtop order, theirs was not that much different from ours. Theyhad one guy who got fifty; we had one guy, and the rest of themscored around them. But we bowled maybe a few too many extrasand we lacked that stability in the top order. If the first fivebatsmen had seen off the first fifteen or twenty overs, it wouldhave been a walk in the park.JW: Our top order looked very nervy out there.DV: That’s right. I take away nothing from the Free Statebowlers; I thought they bowled immaculate line and length firstup, and they knocked us over. They ripped a hole out of the toporder, but like I said, when I got out there I didn’t think itwas overly threatening. If our top order had just consolidated abit more, left a bit more, played time instead of looking at thescoreboard and in the last fifteen gone on a run chase. When wetried to do that, the problem was that we were already eight ornine wickets down. If we had two or three more wickets in hand,it would have been a different story.JW: You looked in a different class from the others in the toporder out there; they were jabbing and flashing, and you were theonly one who seemed able to keep his head and play sensibly.DV: I was more surprised, actually; I thought all our top order,from numbers one to seven, were all in good nick, had beenscoring runs in the league and when we had net practices theywere hitting the ball really well. Maybe a bit ofover-confidence instead of going out there with a game plan,saying, “During the first fifteen overs I’m going to leave it ifit’s outside off stump and just hit the straight balls.” It wasseaming around a bit and maybe we just lacked a bit ofadaptability.JW: The confidence is just so fragile, though, for our team,anyway. The Aussies so often have somebody to pull them out oftrouble, but if it hadn’t been for you we would have been in adisastrous situation because the other top batsmen didn’t seem toknow what was going on.DV: I think I put the loss down to application more thananything else. I think we didn’t apply ourselves in the battingdepartment.JW: Anyway, things began to improve a bit when Craig Evansjoined you, although even he didn’t seem to be at his best forquite a while.DV: It was going really well; he and I had just started hittingout again, we had just started picking up the run rate. It wasthe kind of wicket where, if you stayed in, it wasn’t too hard toplay on. But to get yourself in was very difficult. Whathappened was he got out and we had a new batter in, who had toplay himself in again. Bryan [Strang] and I then started gettinggoing, and I got out, and new batter again. That’s how our wholeinnings went. We didn’t have two batsmen who were well set whocould just knock it around for long. We had too many wicketsdown already, and we had no wickets left at the end to sacrifice.JW: When you went in to bat with four wickets down and onlyseven runs on the board, what was the atmosphere in the dressingroom like then?DV: It was quite difficult because I just felt like it wasn’thappening. Sitting up here [on the balcony], I didn’t even knowwhere the team were – in the changing room, I think. It allhappened so quickly, and by the time I got out and we needed 30runs off the last 35 balls, the team was still in there, positivethat we could still pull this off. Like I said, we had a bigbatting line-up and each one of us can bat, as you saw when lastman David Mutendera came in and hit his first six balls for 12runs. Until that last ball when Dave was run out, no oneactually thought we would lose this game. All it took was a bitof consolidation in the middle, and one or two more wickets andwe would have pulled it off.JW: It’s a big difference, though, between thinking ‘we can doit’ and ‘I’m the guy who can go out and do it for us’.DV: I think a bit of that as well. Maybe it’s a problem thatour batting line-up is too strong; maybe our top order felt, “IfI don’t get the runs, the guy behind me will get them,” insteadof someone going out there and saying, “This is embarrassing; I’mgoing to do this myself.”JW: It must have been really depressing after the match.DV: It was, John; as I said to Trevor [Penney, the coach] afterthe game, “The worst thing about it is that no one even cameclose to beating us during the season during the one-daycompetition, and it would have been better losing a game earlierand winning the final.” To have beaten everybody by such a bigmargin and then coming and losing the final . . .But there are a lot of positives to take out of the season. Ithink maybe the negatives were that our batsmen didn’t applythemselves the whole season; we should have got more hundreds.The guys were getting fifties and sixties but no one was gettinga big score, like we did last year. And maybe our bowlers justlacked a bit of discipline.Where we lost the three-day series was that our bowlers struggledto bowl teams out. We got into situations where we were 300 runsahead of them but we couldn’t bowl them out. Saying that, thetwo games we lost against Northerns and Natal, we lost thembecause we batted badly and they consolidated. But that justshows that they were good enough to bowl us out. Against sideslike Border and Easterns, where we had big advantages with thebat, we couldn’t bowl them out.So hopefully next season we can sit down before the start – and Ithink that’s the best way of doing it – and say, “Look, this iswhat we did last year; each guy go home, make a goal foryourself,” and halfway through the season we revise those goals.I think that’s the best way to make sure we have a successfulseason.Looking at it, we shouldn’t be losing to those sides. We’re anational second team, with five or six national players, and theyare just provincial league sides.On the positive side, we’ve had young guys like Doug Marillier,Mark Vermeulen and Dion Ebrahim, who have come on in leaps andbounds. They’ve played their first season of Board cricket, andDoug’s average were really good. It should do them a world ofgood, and I just hope they’ve learned from those games that nomatter how well you’ve played, you’re only as good as your nextinnings. I think they have, and hopefully next season we can gofrom strength to strength.JW: Have you and Gus [Mackay, the captain] ever looked around atother players in the league and thought you would have liked tohave had them in your side?DV: I think that the side we had, the squad of 13 or 14, hasbeen our best bunch of club cricketers. We’ve also beenfortunate enough to have players from the national side comingdown in the odd game. It’s a bit hard on the club cricketersbecause it means they don’t have a game, but at the moment apartfrom the young guys I’ve mentioned – and Greg Lamb, who’s had agood season but underachieved a bit, I think – not many.Hopefully with the Academy, by next season it will be a differentstory and we’ll be able to push those young guys.I don’t think the selectors have really missed anybody. A fewpeople think, “Why aren’t I playing?”, but you look at them andsay, “Show me your club record.” Their club records have beenbad; you can’t say a 30 at club level, when the national side andthe B side are away, is any good. I’m not knocking our nationalleague, but it becomes a lot weaker, and if you can’t scorefifties and hundreds when the top players are away, you’ve got tolook at yourself in the mirror and say, “I’ve got to beperforming better to get into the B side.”JW: The same with the Logan Cup coming up: with the weakerstandard of play, guys are really going to have to do somethingbig for it to mean a great deal.DV: That’s right. But I think it’s really good; I think it’sgoing to work out well because if the national side was back andall twenty national players were playing, teams like the Academy,Manicaland and Midlands would not even compete. With thenational side going away, it makes Mashonaland a lot weaker,which will bring it down to their level – not knockingManicaland, Midlands of any of those teams. They haven’t playedthat kind of cricket that the Mashonaland people have played, andI think the Logan Cup this year will be really good.JW: Yes, excellent experience for guys who have hardly everplayed three-day cricket before.DV: Definitely. I personally feel that we’re not playing enoughof it. I would like to see in our set-up maybe two-day games.You can’t say, with our academy now we have 22 or 24 professionalplayers, that we can’t organise two-day games on a Saturday andSunday. There a lot of people who work who can get off on aSaturday and Sunday. We can play like the Aussies play, 100-overgames. Saturday afternoon and the whole of Sunday. I think thatcan only strengthen our cricket.JW: Yes; we have the Vigne Cup and the national league, so onecould be kept as it is now and the other played over one and ahalf or two days, to keep a balance.DV: Yes, I think we need to start doing it. I spoke to PaulStrang, who was on the Under-19 World Cup tour. From myexperience, when I was under 19 I used to play club cricket, butwhen we played against England when they came out here a fewyears ago, we had a few guys who were playing club cricket, butthat whole English side was playing country cricket. The problemwe have here is that too many of our Under-19s are only playingclub cricket. Now do we get that Under-19 side into the leagueas a squad, as a team, which will help with selection at anational level, as opposed to school cricket, which is a totallydifferent level from internationals or the World Cup? They havejust one week where they play three games, and a lot of themdon’t perform, because it’s for selection. But if they wereplaying in the league, the selectors could say, “Hey, this guy’sgot talent.” And they could pick a side from that, a squad to goto the World Cup, a squad to tour England. I think that’s thebest way to do it: you play your Under-19s in the nationalleague, in the Vigne Cup.JW: There’s just the problem, though, that if matches are playedover two days, a lot of them will have school commitments, andthere are also exams.DV: Yes, but at the moment our national league is just played onSunday, and there’s no reason why our national league side cannotplay on Sunday. It would develop cricket in Zimbabwe because alot more of the youngsters would be playing against betterplayers, and they mature quickly because they’re playing againstolder people, not just on the field but off the field. On top ofthat they are playing more cricket, they are being exposed tomore theories on the game, as opposed to our school cricket now,which is just time cricket: you bat, and you play for a draw.And all the kids are being encouraged to play for their averagesto get into the national side – which is rubbish. They need toplay competitive cricket at a good level, which we’re not gettingat the moment.They could play as their own team, and we have a coach for them.They go on tour but a tour is different. After a match they cansit down and talk about where they’ve gone wrong, and two dayslater they’ve forgotten all about it. After a tour, they comeback and they don’t see each other again. You can’t developcricket like that. They play as a club, and after each game theyhave a proper coach who tells them, “This is what we did wrong;this is what we did right.” They practise on Tuesdays andThursdays like any club does, and the next Sunday they playagain, and they try to get better and better. This is how we canimprove it.JW: Coming from different centres, though, it wouldn’t bepossible to keep them together . . .DV: That’s right, but if that’s the situation then there’s noreason why you can’t play Mashonaland Under-19s and MatabelelandUnder-19s in the league. You play them on a provincial basis.Or if Matabeleland are so weak and don’t have enough Under-19s,you make it an Under-24 side, and start drawing from the22-year-olds, until you can make a big enough side to help thosejunior cricketers. When we played against England when they werehere four years ago, when I played, they were a class above us.There were three of us who had played club cricket – I’m not eventalking provincial cricket – and each one of them had playedfully professional cricket for a county club for at least a year.Their experience and maturity was unbelievable in comparison.Paul [Strang] spoke to me about this and asked me what I thought,and I told him, “I think it’s a fantastic idea.” He said theyshould play in the leagues; I said why don’t you have an Under-19side playing in the Logan Cup? This obviously isn’t that easybecause of time off school, but he said no, we play them in theclub set-up on Sundays. I asked about if they had Sundays whenthey had to play school cricket, and he said that’s why you makea squad of 15 so if guys go away you can fill in for them.I hear cries from people saying, “My son’s averaging 150 atschoolboy level,” but you watch him play and he just sits on thehandle for 50 overs. You can’t have that in club cricket, incompetitive cricket. You can play like that in a Test match, buthe’s not going to play like that in a club game. You have tolearn to do both.There’s no reason why Under-13s, Under-15s and Under-19s cannotplay in a provincial set-up like we play in the Logan Cup. Forone month a year, at the weekends, they play in a provincialset-up of three-day cricket and one-day cricket. The same fourprovinces, without the academy, of course. There’s no reason whythose provinces can’t select a senior side and all their juniorsides. We have to start playing that sort of cricket, to developour players earlier.We’re getting now players like Dion Ebrahim, who’s playing hisfirst three-day game – for the B side. We can’t have that – it’sthe national second team, and he’s never played the longer gamebefore. Can you see anyone selected for South Africa A for afour-day game, and he’s never played a four-day game before inhis life? It doesn’t happen, and that’s the gap we’ve got in ourcountry now. We’ve got to start playing more provincial cricketwithin those age-groups, so by the time they get to 19, or intothe senior side, they know how to play the longer game. And allit takes is those fine adjustments which they’ll learn from theolder players.I’m not saying that the Under-19 side that went to the World Cupwasn’t the best side, or that they didn’t do well, either; whatI’m trying to say is that the Under-19 side might have beenbetter prepared, more confident, having played more cricket at ahigher level. There are a lot of those players who don’t evenplay club cricket, and they go straight into a World Cup. Myhat’s off to them, though, for how they performed; they nearlybeat England who, like I said, are full-time professionals. Butthere’s no reason why, at that level, there’s any differencebetween the two countries. We can set up something for thosekids here, even if they have to take an afternoon off on a Fridayto play a two-day game. There’s no reason why they can’t playSaturday and Sunday school cricket, two-day matches.I don’t think it’s a money situation, either. We’re talkingdevelopment of cricket. If National Breweries can sponsor thenational league and Ray-Ban can sponsor Old Georgians and OKBazaars can sponsor Old Winstonians, I don’t think it’s that hardto find a sponsor for the Zimbabwe Under-19 provincial cricketset-up, or in the national league. There’s no reason why someonecan’t go out and find a sponsor.These are just my ideas from personal experience in comingthrough the Under-19 ranks and coming to the stage when, at 21, Iwent to Sharjah with the national side, and arriving there, I hadplayed one first-class game. It’s such a big step it’sunbelievable, and we have to start bridging that gap.JW: Coming to the Logan Cup this season, are you going to beplaying for Mashonaland this season, or have you been postedelsewhere?DV: No, I’ve been posted in Mashonaland and I probably will beplaying for them. Hopefully I won’t be here; I’m hopeful I mightget on the national tours to West Indies and England, butobviously I’m not holding my breath. If I make it, I make it,which is a bonus, and if I don’t I’ll be here for the Logan Cup,playing for Mashonaland, and then venturing overseas to fulfil acontract in England.