Chevrons made us love cricket again

OUR ICC Twenty20 World Cup adventure, which started with us winning a qualifier here at home, ended at the iconic Melbourne Cricket Ground yesterday.

About 90 000 fans were inside the stadium to watch our final battle against mighty India, which we lost, while tens of millions turned in to follow the proceedings on television.

While we won only one match in the final phase of the tournament, this cannot be declared as a disastrous campaign by our cricketers.

Yes, we have regrets because we had put ourselves into a position where, against all expectations, there was a good chance we would play in the semi-finals.

Our sensational victory over Pakistan thrust us into a very strong position to challenge for a place in the last four but our heart-breaking narrow defeat at the hands of Bangladesh, and the surprise loss to the Dutch, sealed our fate.

However, this doesn’t mean that this was a poor campaign by the Chevrons.

In fact, it was a successful tour of duty in which our team announced their return to the big time, after years of staggering in the wilderness.

When Dave Houghton took over, the Chevrons had lost their direction and were now an insult to their reputation.

They were now losing to Namibia, at home, and were being hammered, left right and centre, by teams which used to find it difficult to beat us.

Houghton, who knows local cricket probably better than anyone else, having captained the team in the past, started with instilling confidence back into his players, for them to start believing that they could compete, once again.

He also gave the players the freedom to play their shots, to enjoy the game again and to confront the opposition with the belief they could win any match.

It has been a dramatic transformation, especially when one considers where we were, just before Houghton took over.

We won the qualifier and then found ourselves having to fight, in another qualifier, for us to play in the tournament proper.

We also won that qualifier in Australia and while our campaign ended with three straight defeats, it should not cloud the progress we have made.

There has been tremendous improvement and we are certainly on the right course to rebuild our team into a competitive force again.

It’s refreshing that Zimbabwe Cricket has invested a lot into the domestic game’s structures and our players are now playing, in the local competitions, at a regular level.

We need to support Houghton’s vision because he has the grand master plan for us to become the cricket nation that we want.

Sikandar Raza was our star performer at this World Cup and it’s refreshing that he still has some years left in his career.

He will be around, at least, for the next three years and we have to continue building our team around him because he is a natural leader.

We could have done more, if we had beaten Bangladesh, which was possible, and we had beaten Netherlands, which was also possible.

But, we are not complaining.