Zimbabwe Cricket: Interview with Dave Ellman-Brown

Dave Ellman-Brown, the dynamic chief executive of the Zimbabwe Cricket Union, speaks to John Ward about the current state of cricket in the country.

JW: The national cricket team has had a disastrous start to the season losing one-day matches to West Indies and India in Singapore, and then to South Africa and India in Kenya, with only a fairly narrow victory over Kenya to its credit. How do you account for that?

DE-B: It has taken a bit of time to start off the season, and I think the glow of the World Cup still remains. We did as well there as we anticipated we would, by reaching the Super Six. I think our performance there was a bit disappointing; we should have won a game. We played particularly poorly against Pakistan, and this cost us a semi-final place.

We haven't started well this season. We had a disappointing tour to Singapore, where we certainly didn't look the side we did in the World Cup. The team is in Nairobi at the moment, where our performance has been a bit stuttering, although there have been some good individual performances. People like Andy Flower, Grant Flower and Murray Goodwin have come through, along with Johnson and Campbell to a degree. The rest don't look very good. We are having an unbelievable spate of batting collapses from the middle order down, whereas the top order have done well. Grant Flower is an example; he batted extremely well against South Africa and made a very competent 91. But after that we fell apart, and it's disappointing to see people like Paul Strang, Guy Whittall and Stuart Carlisle not making runs. They were good for twenties and thirties in the past, but now they seem to be battling. We certainly have to tighten up and show more consistency than we are doing.

With regard to our bowling, we saw Paul Strang hit for 34 in two overs against South Africa; obviously they were looking to hit him out of the attack and they succeeded in doing that. Johnson was erratic; I didn't think we bowled very well, with a smattering of no-balls and wides. That obviously has to be sorted out, and I hope they will return from Kenya a more disciplined and penetrative bowling attack. The main disappointment against South Africa was that they only took one wicket. They don't seem to have any bite at the moment, but let's not create gloom and doom. I'm sure we will bowl better when Heath Streak is back and able to add a bit more punch to the attack.

We have a couple of players out, but that shouldn't affect us. It gives the opportunity for some of our younger players to make their mark; David Mutendera for one I think is bowling quite well. Heath Streak has had a knee operation and we look forward to him coming back. Adam Huckle has decided he doesn't want to play cricket; whether we can change his mind or not is debatable, but he is a class leg-spinner. He may not be an ideal one-day bowler but he is very useful in Test matches. Paul Strang is not bowling well at all and he seems to have lost his confidence, so we are going to have to look at that, Some of the younger players are not really coming through as fast as they should' Viljoen, Carlisle and others. But it's early days; it's an opportunity to blood them, and we have an awful long season ahead of us. So I don't think we must be filled with doom and gloom because we've had a couple of bad games. We need to get ahead of that and start to perform well.

After Kenya we must look to the Australian tour. The opposition this season is going to be extremely good, the best in the world. We have Australia coming here, and then we play South Africa, two of the best teams in the world. Sri Lanka are bouncing back, and I anticipate a tough tour with them. Finally at home we have England, who have to get themselves out of the gloomy mode they are in at the moment, after performing poorly in the World Cup and then against New Zealand. I'm quite sure that by the time of their South African tour they will rectify their problems and be a competitive team.

After that we go to the West Indies, who are an up-and-down side at the moment, so let's see what they can produce. At home they will be difficult to play, and I'm quite sure that will be a tough tour: two Tests and a series of one-dayers with Pakistan. Then we go to England, with two Tests and a series of one-dayers with West Indies. It's a very busy season, and I'm confident we will perform well and come out on the positive side in mid-2000.

JW: There are exciting new developments taking place at Harare Sports Club. Please would you outline these.

DE-B: We have just finalised a 50-year lease with Harare Sports Club; 25 years, with the option of a further 25. We have taken over the ground, together with several facilities around the ground. We are now in the process of upgrading that ground, to reach the stage where it is suitable for World Cup 2003. It has been confirmed that we will be playing all our preliminary games in Zimbabwe, and we will be playing some in Harare and some in Bulawayo.

We therefore have to make sure that we have facilities that measure up to the requirements of the World Cup. We will have seating here in Harare for up to ten to fifteen thousand people. We will maintain our tented village on the east side of the ground. We have purchased the Police Ground stands that were the property of Mashonaland rugby and relocated them to Harare Sports Club in two sections. We have erected them on the south side of the ground, to hold about 3000 people each.

The rest of the seating has been moved around the ground, right next to the scoreboard on the west side of the ground. We are now putting up a concrete 40-metre stand there in conjunction with Tobacco Industries, together with third-party investors who are box-holders. There will be nine boxes at this stage, hopefully increasing later to eighteen, and they will have all the facilities in there: dining and toilet facilities, and accommodation for about a thousand people. That will be the start of our permanent development next year. We will be putting in a similar stand on the other side of the scoreboard, between the scoreboard and the squash courts, similar in design, which will also cater for public seating and boxes for box-holders. We haven't made up our minds how many yet, but certainly for the Australian tour the stand will be complete and ready for the members of the Tobacco Industry Supporters Club and nine box-holders. The box-holders will be obliged to buy enough tickets to fill that stand, so there is an assured 1000 seats there.

We will be moving the scoreboard back slightly sometime in the future, as it is in the way at the moment and some of the box-holders won't have a total view of the ground. We are thinking of building a players' facility underneath it. We don't anticipate changing it to a digital scoreboard; we think it is one of the most informative in the world. Digital boards do not always work; we are at the mercy of the power supply, which fails periodically in this country, and I think manpower is a lot safer than using the services of Zesa.

We have acknowledged for a long time that our press facilities are unacceptable. We are putting up a media centre, sponsored by Woodrow, at the north end of the ground at the top of the sightscreen. There will be facilities there for the third umpire and the match referee, scorers, radio and television commentators and the press. This will give the media, I believe, all the facilities they require and will improve our relationship with the press, which have at times not been great, understandably in view of the conditions they have worked under.

At the close of the Indian tour, in November last year, we closed the ground and doubled the size of the wicket. We had a table that would accommodate five wickets; it will now accommodate ten, which I think is as big as we will ever need it. It is now totally covered and we will test it with some domestic cricket probably in the latter part of this cricket season to see how it has settled down. It gives us the flexibility of having more wickets available for use, to cater for the extra cricket we play.

It's worth noting that our development is not restricted to Harare Sports Club, but we will also be updating Queens, where several things are being done at the moment, although it is slightly behind the development here at Harare Sports Club. We are in the process of negotiating a lease with the Queens Club for that ground on a similar basis to the one we have concluded with Harare Sports Club. It is our intention to develop both grounds; it is also our intention to fund those and that they will enter into a maintenance agreement with us, but the improvements will remain the property of the Zimbabwe Cricket Union.

The possibility of floodlighting is very much down the line; I do not believe it's a priority at this stage. It is very expensive; some time ago we had a quote for Z$15 million to put in floodlights, and at a conservative estimate that would probably now be Z$50 million. Energy consumption would be very expensive and I don't anticipate that happening for some time. We would have to find a very generous sponsor to pick up that cost because it is certainly beyond us, and I don't think we have enough games to warrant day/night cricket.

JW: What other developments are taking place in Zimbabwe cricket at present?

DE-B: I think ZCU at present finds itself in a stable financial position which has enabled us to take on new developments, thanks to our international sponsors CSI, who look after our international advertising and selling of television rights and with whom we have a very sound agreement. We have had an agreement with them for some while, which we have now fine-tuned and extended, and I am delighted with the arrangement we have with them. That will give us the funding we need to develop our cricketing structure.

We are also putting together an Academy, which is a separate trust, although it does fall under the Zimbabwe Cricket Union umbrella. That is being funded, and we are looking for a major sponsor hopefully to self-finance it. We are also looking at centres of excellence; new centres are going ahead in Mutare and Kwekwe, and we will be spending money in those areas. We are also spending money in the high-density areas, where we are looking for grounds to develop; this will be funded from the Development Trust. Basically what we are trying to do is to develop cricket in all centres of Zimbabwe and lift the level of the game throughout the country.

Regarding domestic cricket, the Logan Cup this season will be competed for by teams from Mashonaland, Matabeleland, Midlands, Manicaland and the Academy. It means that this competition is no longer a two-horse race but becomes more meaningful. Perhaps we can increase the number of teams to six at sometime in the future, with Masvingo coming into the reckoning, but we do not want it to get too big or it becomes counter-productive; if we lower the standard of our domestic cricket it could be to the detriment of the national side. We want to develop Manicaland and Midlands to the point where they can produce teams able to cope at first-class level. This year we are taking players out of our last Academy intake and posting them to these teams, to strengthen them so they can all play on an equal footing. There is a lot of enthusiasm in these areas; Manicaland and Midlands are resuscitating themselves, and the future of cricket in Zimbabwe looks quite secure.

Our grassroots coaching continues: the calibre and quality of these youngsters looks very good, and it is exciting to see some of them at places like Chipembere School -- they really have a lot of talent and that coaching programme will bear fruit. From there we are going into a sponsored scholarship programme, placing some 53 youngsters in cricket-playing schools, most of them at Churchill. We pay all their school fees, which are quite expensive these days; for a boarder we pay something like Z$10000 per boy per term. That will blossom, and the players will soon start coming through into league cricket. It is good to see some black sides in the league already. Winstonians is a typical example; they have some depth and talent among their players, and there are other teams too which are performing admirably. I don't think it will be too long before we have more of them playing in the top leagues, as Winstonians do. It's very encouraging.