ICC recommendation leaves Zimbabwe floundering

Sources close to Zimbabwe Cricket have told Cricinfo that senior board officials were "taken aback" by the recommendation made by the ICC's cricket committee that they should continue to be left out of Test cricket and would be better off playing in the ICC Intercontinental Cup.

Until the cricket committee' s statement, it had been assumed that the decision when Zimbabwe would resume Tests was entirely down to their own board. "Before the announcement, ZC had curled into a comfort zone," the source said. "The initially-penciled return to Tests in November was being used by the board as a shield against criticism it was running down the game. Now that an automatic return has been questioned, ZC has been left exposed.

"If the team goes on to play in the Intercontinental Cup and four-dayers against strong A sides, as recommended, it might still be found wanting thereby pushing a Test return further away."

Although publicly the board has stayed silent, privately officials are stunned. Lovemore Banda, the media manager, spoke in vague terms to the Sunday Standard. "When we deliberately withdrew from Test commitments after assessing our talented but inexperienced national and A sides, we said we would resume our full participation after playing about 12 three or four-day first class matches, to give our players enough exposure," he said. "However, due to scheduling challenges because of the timely availability of A sides to play against, we are well behind where we wanted to be to resume play in November this year. We have not given up on that target, and will continue to assess the situation and evaluate ourselves in conjunction with the ICC."

The decision on whether the November series at home to West Indies can go ahead will be taken at the ICC AGM later this month, and board chairman Peter Chingoka, who is a polished networker, will have to be at his best if Zimbabwe Cricket is to avoid having the decision taken out of its hands.

Slick operator he may be, but it will be increasingly hard for him to convince other boards that Zimbabwe are strong enough to avoid humiliation at Test level. If they back him, then they face having to schedule Tests against Zimbabwe which few seem keen to do, two or three for political reasons, the remainder for financial ones.

Furthermore, if the ICC ratifies the cricket committee's decision then it may will trigger another exodus of players. At the moment the World Cup squad has only officially lost Anthony Ireland, but it is widely rumoured that several others are only hanging on to be paid at the end of the month before they decide whether to call it quits.