A mixture of chaos and farce

The Logan Cup, Zimbabwe's first-class competition, is due to get underway on Thursday (April 12) but such in the chaos inside the country that not only has Zimbabwe Cricket been unable to publish any fixtures, it has yet to actually confirm who is taking part.

The 2005-06 tournament was scrapped by the board - although no official announcement was made for months - amid widespread rumours that standards in the Faithwear Cup, the one-day competition which preceded the scheduled start of the Logan Cup, were so poor that the first-class games would be open to ridicule.

For some time ZC claimed that it had not been cancelled, merely that the board has decided to change the dates of the first-class season. Few believed that, and the 2005-06 event was quietly allowed to die.

The 2006-07 competition was supposed to herald a new start, with the abolition of the old provinces and the creation of new ones to take their place. But less than 48 hours before the opening matches were due to begin, it was apparent that nobody knew what was going on. Repeated requests for fixtures produced nothing, and ZC's own website had no information either.

On Tuesday, Chris Chiketa, ZC's cricket operations manager, issued a statement in which he spoke of foreign players being brought in, in what would be a welcome bid to improve standards. "Kenya has shown a keen interest to be part of the proceedings," he said, "and we hope they will make it for the second week of the tournament as they are still re-grouping after taking part in the World Cup in the West Indies."

Cricinfo spoke to Cricket Kenya and a source said that the invitation to send the Kenyan national side had come last week. He added that it would not be possible to send the full side as several players had club commitments in England, but it was still possible that an A team could travel to participate. Negotiations are said to be ongoing, but it seems bizarre that a competition can start without a full list of participants being known. On Tuesday, the ZC website referred to Pakistani cricketers being lined-up to play, but by Wednesday that reference had been removed.

As a further indication of the shambles blighting Zimbabwe cricket, scorecards from the Faithwear Cup, which took place a fortnight ago, have yet to be provided to the media.