Chevrons have given us, the world something to behold
A WAVE of happiness swept across the country on Tuesday when the Zimbabwe national cricket team, the Chevrons, held their nerve in a tense final over and inflicted a two-run victory over bitter rivals Afghanistan in an ICC Cricket World Cup Qualifier at Queens Sports Club in Bulawayo.
There were wild scenes of jubilation inside the refurbished Queens Sports Club as scores of Zimbabweans poured on to the field to celebrate with their heroes who had found a way to beat a team which, only a few weeks ago, inflicted a 1-4 series humiliation on the Chevrons in the United Arab Emirates.
The sight of wicket-keeper Brendan Taylor — who last year chose not to renew his good contract at English county side Nottinghamshire, where he was getting a handsome pay cheque, to commit himself to playing for his country again — slumped on the ground in dreamland after completing the catch for the final wicket, was something to behold.
The party scenes among the Zimbabweans of all ages, tribes and races, who were battling to control their emotions in the euphoria of that victory, provided the world with some great images of what we truly are as a nation.
We are not those thugs who, just across town in the City of Kings a few days earlier, had ambushed MDC-T vice-president Thokozani Khupe and engaged in an orgy of violence that appears to be tearing the opposition party apart in recent weeks.
What unfolded at Queens Sports Club, in our moment of victory, is what we really are as Zimbabweans — a peace-loving people who, for all the challenges that we have been forced to endure because of the punitive economic sanctions which Western countries have imposed upon us, remain very proud of our identity and our beautiful nation.
We have our challenges as a nation, big and small, but that can’t uproot our enduring pride in who we are as a people and when we have to demonstrate that pride, especially during sporting occasions when our national teams do well, very few other nations can do it better than us.
When we were handed the mandate to host the ICC Cricket World Cup Qualifiers, there were dissenting voices from our detractors around the globe who questioned our capacity to stage a tournament of such magnitude with the prophets of doom claiming we were going to come short.
They pointed to the economic challenges that we have been battling as the reason to suggest that we were ill-quipped as a country to host such a massive international tournament featuring 10 teams drawn from across the globe.
They called for the tournament to be switched to the United Arab Emirates, a country we had beaten in the bidding to host the qualifiers, because they probably wanted to go and shop in Dubai and have fun in the desert.
But the International Cricket Council, to their credit, stuck to their guns and said they were not going to reverse their decision to let us host the tournament, and in their assessment of the first week of the tournament, the world cricket governing body said everything had so far gone according to script and we are writing a success story.
The huge attendance figures at Queens Sports Club, where the locals have taken the Chevrons to their hearts and are pushing them in their bid to qualify for the ICC Cricket World Cup in England and Wales next year, have been something to behold.
This has even forced the ICC to change our match against Scotland on Monday, which had been scheduled for the Bulawayo Athletic Club, to Queens Sports Club because they believe the former venue is too small to accommodate the huge numbers of fans who have been coming to cheer the Chevrons on in this adventure.
The Scotsmen, who just a few years ago were being barred from visiting this country by the British Government to play cricket on political grounds, seem to be enjoying their stay in Bulawayo and have been posting images of their happy camp for the whole world to see.
It’s a welcome summer retreat for them and our sunshine gives them conditions to enjoy themselves outdoors at a time when their homeland is being battered by some of the coldest winters in recorded history.
The Irish have also been enjoying their stay in Harare and every team which is here — from Papua New Guinea to the West Indies — has embraced our country and the players and officials are not only enjoying our hospitality, but also the pitches we have provided them to play their cricket and try and qualify for the World Cup next year.
Of course, all that investment for us will count for little, in the event the Chevrons fail to qualify for the World Cup and we are happy that our boys, so far, have shown the hunger to go all the way and they just need to maintain their focus to reap the rewards.