Makhosini Hlongwane
Eddie Chikamhi Harare Bureau
SPORT and Recreation Minister Makhosini Hlongwane has challenged Zimbabwe Cricket to invest more in development and transform the national teams into winners on the international stage. Hlongwane yesterday met the senior ZC officials, led by newly elected board chairman Tavengwa Mukhuhlani, when he visited the Harare Sports Club on a familiarisation tour.
The Minister praised Zimbabwe Cricket for their efforts to bring numbers into the game although he felt more needed to be done to achieve greater participation. But, most importantly, Hlongwane said Zimbabwe needed to claim their place on the world stage by cultivating a culture of winning games.
Hlongwane, who was part of the crowd that thronged Sports Club on Sunday afternoon to watch the first QMobile Twenty20 match between Zimbabwe and Pakistan, said his ministry was fully behind ZC in their efforts to make the game popular. He said more focus on grassroots development was needed.
He said the association was doing well through the establishment of high performance centres but felt that there are still some areas that are marginalised. “So the key challenge is to say let’s develop the game, let’s demystify the game, let’s promote access to the game, let’s promote reach as far as the game is concerned, let’s develop our tentacles to go down to the common man, let’s broaden that supply side base so that we are able to feed the best skills to the demand side,” said Hlongwane.
The Minister said Zimbabwe could do well to improve its rankings. Zimbabwe are currently ranked 10th among the Test playing nations, 11th in One Day Internationals and 14th in ICC Twenty20 Championship. “We want to begin to see a winning cricket team and that speaks to the issue of organisation that speaks to the issue of approach, that speaks to the issue of all of us sharing a vision that says as Zimbabwe we are able to do this.
“Cricket is particularly unique in the sense that it reaches out to the global audience. So the image of the country is associated with what we are doing as Zimbabwe Cricket on the pitch. We have probably a billion or two billion people across the globe watching that game. “We must be able to give it our best so that our country can come back again and regain that social capital that it used to have generated from sport.
“I don’t think in Africa we have that many countries that do better than us in cricket but if we slack in terms of development structures we will have countries that never used to play cricket coming in to challenge us and that’s a thing that we must never do. We must never allow that,” said Hlongwane.
However, the Minister said he was impressed by the outlook of Zimbabwe Cricket administration. He said the ZC leadership has demonstrated sound administration as depicted by the stability and unity of purpose among the leadership. He reiterated that governance issues in sport rank among his priorities.
“It is important obviously to have two things as far as the administration of sport is concerned. The first one is the issue of governance. I have not heard that much governance issues in respect of Zimbabwe Cricket. “I take it that because we don’t have too many (negative) headlines in respect of how ZC is run you are doing well on that front. I hope that is the case.
“It is also important to have stability. We must have very little politics and more concentration on the game. Often when we become political we kill the game. As a ministry we want to challenge you to concentrate more on the development of the game,” said Hlongwane.