CRICKET WILL BE POORER WITHOUT ZIM

BRISBANE. - Imagine liking cricket, and experiencing anything but pure exhilaration at what transpired in Perth last week?

Imagine watching Brad Evans, prone on the ground, his team-mates enveloping him in a suffocating embrace, a scene likely replicated everywhere from Borrowdale to Bulawayo, Mount Pleasant to Mutare, and be too emotionally jaded to feel the delight.

Imagine listening to Pommie Mbangwa calling that final ball, allowing himself to be vulnerable both in his stress and his joy, and failing to grasp the magnitude of what had just happened.

Imagine watching that contingent of Zimbabwean fans, a travelling Castle Corner across Australia, let loose their emotions and not welling up.

Perhaps it was harsh on Pakistan that they ended up being Zimbabwe’s most consequential victims on a global stage in 15 years.

Pakistan are, after all, one of few Full Members that continue to fulfil their FTP obligations to Zimbabwe even when there’s little money to be made from those tours.

Pakistan play Zimbabwe so often, in fact, that their players’ records have often required those numbers to be filtered out for a more accurate understanding of their abilities.

But, if there’s one team that could easily have found itself filtered out of the game altogether, the little landlocked country in southern Africa was a prime contender.

Kenya is little more than a cricketing footnote now, and Zimbabwe looked perilously close to following them there till some time ago.

England last played Zimbabwe in any format anywhere in 2007.

Australia have played only one Test in Zimbabwe to date, in 1999.

Zimbabwe’s last tour to India was in 2002, and the last Test anywhere between the two was in 2005.

You know what happened against Pakistan, and that final over that might yet take Zimbabwe to heights they have never reached in a World Cup before.

But, even as you savour the cricket you saw on that magical evening, don’t forget how close we came to the whole thing not taking place at all.

A small nation that had much to give and little to lose threw its lot into a sport that sometimes doesn’t quite seem to love it back enough, and showed what cricket could be with a lot more joy and a little less avarice.

Even when the memory of this World Cup fortnight fades, never forget how Zimbabwe made you feel last Thursday night.

And never forget that what might be a fun night of sport for us is a life’s work for Sean Williams and Craig Ervine and Wessly Madhevere, for Raza and, of course, Houghton.

Imagine, indeed, thinking that cricket, the rich sport that it might be, isn’t infinitely richer for having Zimbabwe in it.