News: MCC recruits 2 Afghans for their cricket team

This is a slightly strange piece of news. MCC usually recruits European cricketers, either retired Englishmen or sometimes talented players from the 4 neighbouring countries. Good for Afghanistan that 2 of their players will get this benefit. I guess the massive thrashing they gave the MCC caused the recruiting.

I am not all that surprised, because as far as I have read, there are like 1 million cricketers in afghanistan. They didnt have a ground, which they are now working on, and they didnt have an academy that they have just opened up.

But one has to take things into perspective. First of all, all South Asian countries get cricket on their television sets all day. That is why all of Nepal, Afghanistan, Bhutan and Maldives are so much interested in the game. Secondly, 4 million afghans lived in Pakistan for 20 years and only returned to native land 3-4 years back.

Opinion: Mbangwa speaks out on Zimbabwe

Pommie Mbangwa spoke about the state of cricket in Zimbabwe the other day, and he was spot on in most things. But the most important in my opinion is the fact that "it can all happen again". I have mentioned this on my blog, that if the Zimbabwe board is going to eat all the money up as is alleged, and not give any money to the players, then the only people who would be willing to play are the teenagers who are charmed by the idea of playing highest level of cricket and representing their country out of patriotism. But these people are going to grow up, and it seems once they do and start asking, very realistically and reasonably, for compensation, they are out and a new band of teenagers comes in.

Pathetic.

Zimbabwe was one of my favorite teams, and some of the best cricket matches I have seen in my life involved them with resulting victories. They were also developing very rapidly. Slowly but surely the blacks were coming through the ranks, and they were also getting the one world class player every couple of years. Sean Ervine is an example. Hamilton Masakadza, Payangara were others. If they had been fed into an established team, Zim would have become quite solid today.