Manase charms Coltart

The Herald

6th December 2015

Zimbabwe cricket Chairman Wilson Manase appears to have charmed one of the organisation’s biggest critics, former Sports Minister David Coltart. Manase, who replaced long serving chairman Peter Chingoka last year, has launched a massive restructuring of both the Zimbabwe Cricket and the national team during the short time he has been at the helm.

The Harare lawyer has extended an olive branch to a number of former players and administrators, who had fallen out with the organisation, to come and help take the game forward.

Alistair Campbell, a former national team skipper who had turned into a fierce critic of how the game was being run, has been wooed back into the fold as one of its top administrators.

Campbell, a respected international cricket commentator, was appointed the Zimbabwe Cricket managing director, in charge of cricket affairs.

He started his new job at the beginning of the month and will have to play a big role in the national team’s preparations for the 2015 ICC Cricket World Cup, which gets underway in Australia and New Zealand next month.

The national cricket team slumped to an all-time low when they crashed to a 0-5 whitewash defeat in ODIs and a 0-3 white wash loss in Tests during their tour of Bangladesh.

It brought a fitting close to a year in which the team was also humbled by lowly Afghanistan on home soil while a stunning ODI win over Australia failed to hide the gloom.

Manase felt that there was need for changes to be affected to arrest the slide and put his train back contract and Steve Mangongo, who led the team in Bangladesh, was sacrificed in one of the major decisions.

There are some who feel Mangongo wasn’t given enough time to prove himself and he was set up to fall given that it was always going to be difficult for the locals to tame the Tigers in their backyard where conditions were in favour of the hosts.

Others also feel that Mangongo’s finest hour, when he led his team to an emotional triumph over Australia that made headlines around the world, showed that he was a very capable coach who only needed time and support.

His team was also competitive against South Africa.

However, others felt that the national team was exposed during the lengthy tour of Bangladesh and there was need for a change of the technical staff to reverse the slide.

Manase and his board acted quickly and appointed vastly experienced Australian coach Dav Whatmore to lead the team at the World Cup with the possibility of their marriage being extended after the tournament.

Whatmore follows in the footsteps of his compatriot Geoff Marsh in taking charge of the Zimbabwe national cricket team.

He believes that the qualification into the super eight will represent a good adventure for his new team in his home country where conditions will be vast the different from what they encountered during their horror tour of Bangladesh.

Manase’s revolution at Zimbabwe cricket appears to be slowly winning the support of the organisation’s biggest critics, including those who described him as a stooge when he replaced Chingoka.

Coltart, a fierce critic of Zimbabwe cricket, is one of those who have been charmed by Manase.

“Whilst the distal early days, I call on all Zimbabwe cricket lovers to throw their full support behind Wilson Manase as he reforms the game,” Coltart tweeted on New Year’s Day.

This is in sharp contrast to his remarks in July when he greeted Manase’s appointment with a lot of pessimism.

“Chingoka’s Except from Zimbabwe cricket is nothing to celebrate,” tweeted Coltart back then.

“Given he’s been replaced by Manase who, whilst a nice guy, has never played the game.”

Six months later, it appears that Coltart’s reservations that the game’s leadership was being passed to someone who never played cricket at the top level, have melted away.

It’s a far cry from Coltart’s position just a few months ago when he appeared not to see anything positive coming from Manase’s leadership.

Just last September, the former sports minister was morning loudly that Zimbabwe cricket appeared to have turned into a racist organisation where white players were being pushed out of the system.

And all this was happening under Manase’s watch.

“In my view there has been a concerted effort to chase away white players and coaches and players who stand up, e.g. Taibu,” Coltart tweeted.

“Chairman of Zimbabwe Cricket Wilson Manase now needs to move forward to eradicate racism, corruption, regionalism and abuse of power.”

In November last year Coltart was again critical of the direction the game was taking.

“I wonder when Wilson Manase is going to realise just how much damage is being done to Zimbabwe cricket by the present ‘coach’ and selectors.”

This came at the height of the fallout that followed Sean Williams’ omission from the touring party to Bangladesh.

Coltart has been a strong supporter of Williams and they are many who also feel that while the all-rounder might have erred in his conduct, the team’s interests should have been taken into account given that he would have been a key figure in those turning wickets.

Even football teams have a number of their problem children but they find a way to handle them without sacrificing the success of the teams.

Coltart has been preaching the gospel that Williams has a better first-class record than the world’s leading all-rounder, Shakib Hasan, who was the architect of Zimbabwe’s downfall in Bangladesh.

Shakib, himself, isn’t a prime example of a disciplined cricketer but the Tigers have found a way to manage him and he will be the vice captain of the national team at the World Cup, just months after serving a ban from the team.

Coltart even believes the future for the national team is Brighton once other players, who walked away from the team, to reconsider their positions.

“Now that we have a good coach and the corrosive element has been taken out of the team, I hope players like Charles Coventry will step forward,” tweeted Coltart.