From The Pavilion

Chezza wrote: ↑

Mon Aug 28, 2023 11:10 pm

Tour 2 summary

We finished with 2 wins and 3 losses with the younger side and got off the bottom of the one day rankings. Now 17th

Highlight of the tour was the win in game 3 over division champions Kenya when we were outrated by 21k. Kumangozi performed very well in his two games and he’s certainly going to be a very valuable Nat team player in future.

Negatives were that while the younger bowlers performed much better than the older counterparts from previous tours, the younger batters were just as poor. Mlambo was good in game 1 and Hashim "Richard" had a great tour. But the other boundary hitters all didn’t fire. In game 4 we really should have chased down Canada’s 170 but a late collapse saw us fall 20 runs short. Had we won that game we likely would have promoted, so that was disappointing.

As Epcguy has touched on, the most critical aspect to Zimbabwe’s long term turnaround is the youth pulls, in strong academies. My return from 2 deluxe academies so far has been horrendous. So far I’ve had 16x 500 wagers 1x 700 wager and 1x 1000 wager (who had dreadful fielding and tech and sold for 2k). All not even club level worthy. So fair to say my shocking pulls have continued with Zimbabwe but I’ll keep trying and hopefully get a few eventually. Currently we have no future Nat prospects for fast bowlers in the 21-25 age group so it’s a big concern going forward.

Collywobbles wrote: ↑

Fri Sep 01, 2023 10:26 am

The quicks at that age group scare me a bit.
Arubi & Mastruet look the best, Trowse has been ruined with awful training and Madhuku is the only one who might make it.
It’s a very small pool

Chezza wrote: ↑

Sun Sep 03, 2023 11:09 am

Collywobbles wrote: ↑

Fri Sep 01, 2023 10:26 am

The quicks at that age group scare me a bit.
Arubi & Mastruet look the best, Trowse has been ruined with awful training and Madhuku is the only one who might make it.
It’s a very small pool

Given FTP heavily favours bowlers I think all of us pulling Zimbabwe should start pulling seam bowlers and hoping for the best. A good fast bowler could become a 8 season senior Nat player in future, given the generation of no fast bowlers coming up.

Chezza wrote: ↑

Mon Sep 04, 2023 11:14 pm

No chance everyone starts pulling seam but a couple more teams going seam pulls could certainly help the pool. The other thing with pulling seam is the majority with any skills are generally mediums which doesn’t change much anyway.

At the youth level things have definitely started to turn, but this will take a long while to start seeing results at the senior levels but it’s a good start.

What I’ve found unusual about Zimbabwe at the senior level is the amount of decently trained batsman across all age groups but a huge lack in bowling.