Bleacher Report - Articles by Conant Masocha

Zimbabwe Batsman Hamilton Masakadza Comes of Age

Conant Masocha — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 09:02:21 -0400

Amidst the frenetic Twenty20 Champions League and Trinidad&Tobago's exploits in India, a one day series in Zimbabwe has gone almost unnoticed. This is not unexpected of course: it’s hard to summon enough motivation to follow a discredited cricket nation when the likes of Lindell Simmons, Dwayne Bravo and the magnificent Kieron Pollard are wrecking havoc against more established names in world cricket.

And yet just this afternoon Masakadza hit a magnificent 178 off 169 balls against Kenya in what turning out to be a 4-1 demolition in the five match series. This is by no means mere statistic against a weak cricket nation: Gary Kirsten’s highest one day score of 188 came of the United Arab Emirates a little over 13 years ago.

Masakadza reckoning has not come by accident. In his last 15 innings alone in one day internationals the 25-year-old has scored a mammoth 710 runs at an average of 55 runs, amounting to over a third of the of the 2100 one day runs in total he has scored.

At 936 runs this year, he is the world’s leading scorer in one day internationals, four ahead of Australia’s Ricky Ponting. Seldom have batsman come so green, against any opposition.

As a 17-year-old schoolboy Masakadza became the youngest batsman to score a Test century on debut – 119 runs against the West Indies in 2001.

I have keenly followed his career since and a few months after that magnificent innings he defied Makhaya Ntini, Shaun Pollock and Claude Henderson to score 13, 85, 13 and an unbeaten 42 in the space of two test and four innings against South Africa.

Then followed an abysmal low of which the deepest depths came when he was dropped for the 2007 World Cup in the West Indies. It was a controversial decision and I didn’t agree with it. But no matter: this is a batman who will one day break all of Zimbabwe Test batting records, Dave Houghton and Andy Flower’s.

The real test will doubtless come in the cauldrons of test cricket in two or three years time amidst the feisty bowling of Dale Steyn, Mitchell Johnson, Lasith Malinga and whoever new gem the likes of South Africa, India and Pakistan would have uncovered in that time.

But the platform has been laid.

The Curious Case of Caster Semenya

Conant Masocha — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 08:47:11 -0400

There are men who look like women. Everyone knows that. Everyone. Ask the countless boys and girls who have been so cruelly teased by their playmates for having deep, throaty voices and pretty, effeminate looks.

Ask Oscar Wilde, who a little over a century ago witnessed Dorian Gray charm the pants off both ladies and men with his effeminate looks and "sensuous lips."

Or ask South African Jacob Semenya, whose daughter Caster has been
been relentlessly pursued this week by the Australian and British press with the hope that the 18-year-old may actually turn out to be a man.

Indeed, the scrutiny all week has been unrelenting, the girl’s mind thrashed into an Inquisition and her battered body dragged around the walls of Troy as carrion birds gathered around for leftovers.

But why the apoplexy in the British and Australian press this past week over a girl who, by all intents and purposes, only possesses a more than healthy pair of calves, immense biceps, and absolutely no breasts to speak of?

Why this need to find fault by media and rival athletes over what, according to The Science of Athletics, may yet turn out to be no more than a simple case of two female chromosomes XX, being dominated in the womb by one male chromosome Y?

And why has the world so soon forgotten of a similar case just across the border—Samukeliso Moyo of Zimbabwe only a few years ago—to realize the condition is not so rare and abnormal as it would have us believe?

The Australian and British media and to an extent the Americans, would normally be so sensible except where their sensibilities—religious blackmail, the war in Iraq, Zimbabwe, and so forth—are offended.

But this week, all concerned came out sounding like constipated middle-class tabloids, replete with snooty jibes and grubby footnotes to what in due course will prove to be an athletic phenomenon.

An Australian journalist was first to hit stride, duly proclaiming the muscular Caster’s body redoubtable.

Not to be outdone, the Times of London joined in. "She is only 18," they declared, pretending to reason, but only managing to join the ranks of the ignorant, "so talent that good would almost certainly have plenty of opportunities to stake her claim to greatness once the gender verification process has been completed.

“If, of course, it cleared her," the tabloid concluded, displaying a curious cynicism.

Often, what one perceives to be warped or malicious or eroding leaves one speechless: Not having the insight of a philosopher or the wit and vocabulary of a poet, to shout bloody murder and condemn in the strongest terms or expound in eloquent language, I was left flapping; beached like a carp by the sheer nerve of the bastards.

It was enraging, to be sure, this cynical, preemptive judgment; a medieval insult of pig swill and cow tonsils being thrown out of the castle walls for the rest of the world to consume. God, what breathtaking arrogance.

What astonishing emptiness that a journalist can presume to judge when best for a girl, one from an impoverished background, to race on the grounds of only her age.

And what righteous, old testament anger from the South African media this week, as they formed a laager around “their golden girl.”

“Jealousy makes you nasty," crowed one headline. The Ashes, rugby, and sport in general, it seems, are the only things that can divide the opinions of these otherwise similar media of three middle class societies.

And so the insults—for that’s what it was deemed to be by the ANC Youth League, eagerly chucking their two pence worth—allegations, obsufication, and denials abide, but it was Athletics South Africa boss Leonard Chuene who summed up the nation's mood best: "She was conceived by a man and a woman, no one can dispute this. Children are not taken to laboratories to determine their gender. We look at one place and we know it."

Case closed.

Tamim Gatecrashes Coventry's Party

Conant Masocha — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 05:50:25 -0400

Never before has Charles Coventry made 194 runs in any form of cricket. In fact, only twice before has he passed the three magical numbers, and of these none of them have been remotely close to the 200 he was surely set for on Sunday against Bangladesh.

Not over the two Test matches he played before he went into self-imposed exile after a spat with former coach Kevin Curran; not over many four day matches that regularly pass as first class matches in Zimbabwe’s limited domestic game; not even in a three-year sojourn playing club cricket until last year in England.

But on Sunday, in just under 50 overs of cricket, he let rip. God, it was glorious this lashing out of willow over leather, the brute animal power and mind coming together to complete an innings if such epoch proportions; a white man's latent anger in a country that has so unjustly lashed out against their race.

Such innings have seldom little to do with cricket than the person beneath the spectacles.

It was surely an injustice that Zimbabwe’s flatulent bowling efforts out did all of Coventry’s work and they will be much frustration and gnashing of teeth before Tuesday’s final and ultimately pointless game resumes.

But the man who set a record equaling 194 runs in world cricket is not one normally to be taken so seriously as person, let alone one who his teammates can entrust on a national game.

Four months ago for Zimbabwe A in South Africa, as he and teammate mark Vermeluen started what has now been termed by scribes a remarkable come back into the folds of the nation’s cricket, Coventry sat watching underneath a makeshift tent erected as the team changing rooms by the hosts in Benoni.

In due course, maybe because of boredom, maybe because of a constipated or upset stomach he let rip four in intermittent and full-blown farts as his teammates looked on aghast. They disgustedly moved away and, only Vermeluen didn’t seem to mind, but that seemed in opinion two of a kind. Utterly eccentric and certainly not to be taken seriously.

And so the series has been taken away by immaculate Tamim Iqbal of Bangladesh, but thanks to Coventry astonishing innings, and the brave Tigers of Bangladesh the next few innings from all batsmen concerned are ones to look forward to.

Selection Bloopers Cost Zimbabwe

Conant Masocha — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 05:39:40 -0400

Last Wednesday evening, former Zimbabwe bowling kingpin Heath Streak asserted to all who would listen that, contrary to wide belief, his former home ground Queens, host to five one-day matches against Bangladesh this month, was not the sole domain of spin bowlers, and therefore the home side would be best advised to field a conventional attack of three fast bowlers and two spinners.

The selectors will rue this missed wisdom, because a few days later, former compatriot and new convener of selectors Alistair Campbell emerged from the boardroom to announce three spinners in a five man bowling attack, also comprising of just two medium pacers.

The result was immediately evident: in the first match after gamely posting a total of 207, the Bangladeshis, for so long fed on a diet of quality spin bowling in the subcontinent, eagerly dug into the total once they had seen off the potency of Elton Chigumbura.

Despite adding one pace bowler at the expense of spinner Graeme Cremer, the second game was no different: trump card Ray Price was sent for a handful; “the economist” Prosper Utseya was pilloried for 50 and change; and between them, slow bowlers Sean Williams and Stuart Matsikenyeri contributed 32 runs in just four overs of Bangladesh’s mammoth total of 320.

And curiously, it was a fast bowler Chigumbura who had the best returns of the day with 3 for 53.

No, this belief that Queens is a zone for spin bowling has no credence, for how do you explain this obvious disparity in figures? Perhaps our analysts were confusing test cricket with one day cricket.

Now that figures!

More curious still is the omission of bowler Tawanda Marina yet again. How a bowler who has shown time and time again that he has more bowling brain in his fingers than most of his other compatriots combined doesn't make an appearance boggles the mind.

He will probably play on Friday as first change to Edward Rainsford, but this will only be damage limitation to what has been an abject selection so far.

Which brings us to the batting.

Williams has shown again and again why he is so invaluable, Mark Vermeluen has bounced back admirably, and even the eccentric Charles Coventry, so hard to take seriously as a person, let alone in a national game, has already done in one game more than Matsikenyeri has done in the last two years.

Number four batsman Chamu Chibhabha? What is his role exactly? Surely not that of bowling. And surely not as number three batsman now that Coventry has made the position his.

And surely not that of the middle order since he is so abject against slow bowling.

Are we talking here of opening the batting—if he can dislodge Hamilton Masakadza, by far Zimbabwe’s most consistent batsman in the last two years? Surely not.

The less said about Brandon Taylor the better: each missed boundary down leg magnified Tatenda Taibu’s greatness, each blocked delivery, a reminder of how the batsman can utterly play for himself, and the team in a bog.

Zimbabwe has packed their side with batters in this series to the extent that match winner Elton “Boom Boom” Chigumbura has been relegated to number nine; and of these Chibhabha, and Matsikenyeri’s are yet to be defined. If it wasn’t for wicket keeping duties Taylor, too, would be redundant.

All On Track, Says Zimbabwe A Coach Steven Mangongo

Conant Masocha — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 05:08:35 -0400

After watching his young side thrash Canada and the previously fancied Ireland last week, Zimbabwe A coach Stephen Mangongo feels his side is well on track and could have a few of his players challenging for spots in the national side.

The outstanding Mbekezeli Mabuza, Cephas Zhuwawo, and captain Tymmcen Maruma stood out as Zimbabwe steamrolled Canada on Tuesday, then thrashed the hapless Ireland a day later.

Opening batsman Zhuwawo hit a belligerent 45 against Ireland, while Maruma had sparkled with a hundred runs a week earlier against the Namibian national team.

Western's batsman Mbekezeli Mabuza went unbeaten in both matches against Ireland and Canada , hitting 56 and 45 not out.

Said Mangongo: "It's been a good team effort altogether, although I cannot deny that
a few players have really come good in the last tour to Namibia and South Africa.

“Timmy finally showed his potential with the bat against Namibia last week, and you have just seen first hand what Zhuwawo can do to an attack," remarked Mangongo as the left-hander went on a rampage.

"Mabuza has gone about with his innings patiently. So certainly the players are coming up well and so is the team, which acts as the feeder system for the national side.”

Indeed, top order batsman Zhuwawo did his prospects of a return to the
national team no harm after he hit a bullish 45 against Ireland the
following day.

Such was his dominance that when the left handed batsman was finally dismissed, he had blasted 45 of Zimbabwe's 55 runs.

He showed a wide array of stokes, hooking and pulling with panache and cutting ferociously.

Even Mabuza, normally so circumspect, lashed out against Ireland on Wednesday, with three massive sixes, to indicate what confidence can do to a player in form.

The previous day against Canada he had hit a more carefully constructed, but fluent, half century.

The match between Ireland and Zimbabwe had been eagerly anticipated after the thriller at the World Cup two years ago, and the Irishman belligerence all round.

Despite setting a bullish tone—Phil Simmons, the former Zimbabwe coach and now coach of Ireland, had visited the Zimbabwe camp a day earlier and promised a good fight—the Irish were quickly put to the sword after being dismissed for just 118 runs in 38 overs, before Zimbabwe coasted home in good time.

Bowlers Tendai Chisoro and Trevor Garwe stood out, and the 17-year-old leg spinner Natsai Mashangwe showed promise, as he outfoxed old hand Andrew White of Ireland to be smartly stumped.

Is This the Renaissance for Zimbabwe?

Conant Masocha — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 02:23:57 -0500

Can this good form and fortune continue like this? Can Zimbabwean hearts dare take the pitching, heaving, surging hope that has been sown into their souls by the thunderously victorious cricket team in Kenya?

Can Team Zimbabwe—formed by just a team of young guns—keep winning, scoring and winning as they have seemed to do lately? Is this truly a renaissance for Zimbabwe cricket?

One day cricket lore would tell the story, that once upon a time, two folks called Andy Flower and Henry Olonga offset a cataclysmic series of events that eventually led, almost a year later, to 14 players quitting the game simultaneously and the team being stripped of their Test status.

But a team of youngsters, guided by opportunism, an unfaltering, somewhat staggering strength, Team Zimbabwe rebuilt and, after four years of tumult, scorn and rejection, once again rose to become a top team…

Two weeks ago, before the one day series in Kenya took off, your correspondent forecast that the Zimbabwe Chevrons, finely tuned from a reinvigorating tour of the subcontinent in which they managed to win two of five matches, would prove too strong for the Masai of Kenya.

But even by this bullish tone, the five-match thrashing of the Kenyans has been truly staggering. To put the utter domination of the Zimbabweans into perspective, consider that only a few months ago even the fairly intermediate Irish were bombastic when faced with the prospect of playing Zimbabwe, and the Kenyans hugely expectant after winning a decisive battle two months ago.

Consider that chief bowlers Tawanda Mpariwa and Edward Rainsford were rested for at least two matches and consider that Tatenda Taibu didn’t even lift a bat in anger in the series. Consider that the batting lineup was tweaked, therefore, and new responsibility handed to newcomers Foster Mtizwa and Malcolm Waller. And yet everybody stepped onto the plate.

In the five matches played by Zimbabwe their batsmen have averaged an innings total of 280 runs, chief whip Elton Chigumbura weighing in with 224 runs at a staggering strike rate of 154.

This is unprecedented. We have always known Chigumbura to have ballistic arms. We know he can hit out of Lahore, and the Pakistanis know it too. The signs were evident early on, when in only his fifth one day international as an 18-year-old he defied everything that Australia’s Glenn McGrath, Jason Gillespie, Michael Kasprowicz, Andrew Symonds and Brett Hogg threw at him to make 77, fifty-two of those runs in boundaries.

But in recent times—in fact, since Kevin Curran—he had looked more circumspect, which made his sudden explosion against Kenya all the more startling. But more comfortingly for the Chevrons, five of their top six batsmen, used interchangeably in the five games played, got runs. Three of them, Hamilton Masakadza, Sean Williams and Chigumbura, averaged no less than 50, and even the tail-enders weighed in.

The Sri Lankans, no doubt, present a far more sobering prospect in three weeks time, when the Chevrons return to the subcontinent for four one day matches.

But for now may the good times roll. If not the results, then the runs.

Zimbabwe: The Slide Stops in Nairobi

Conant Masocha — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 11:45:50 -0500

Despite claims to the contrary by satisfied officials, Zimbabwe did not pass the subcontinental test in Bangladesh. But neither did they fail, largely thanks to the dogged pitches the team found in the now gone and forgotten tour of Bangladesh.

Pitches in Sri Lanka especially, and much of the subcontinent, have always seemed to have been held together by sawdust and glue; but even by these middling standards, the ones seen recently in the tri-nations and one-day series by Bangladesh and Zimbabwe were exceptionally awful.

Therein lies the challenge. Bad pitches lead to questioning of batsmen. Skilled ones, and those willing to apply themselves, answer them.

In this series, however, quietly forgotten and shunted aside by other greater cricket achievements in Australia and Pakistan, nobody could answer them. Premier batsman Sean Williams was quite off-color, leaving his average best for late; and the dashing Mohammad Ashraful sparkled, only to extinguish very early.

Shakib Al Hassan, now the world’s best batsman, could have been outstanding had he been challenged more often; but the totals chased always proved far too small for his considerable talents.

For the last ranked team in Test cricket, the challenges remain formidable.

The retirement of 14 senior players all at once and the horrible disappointment of losing Sean Ervine and Tinashe Panyangara are far more grave setbacks than can usually be recognized in the day to day contest of a Test.

Kenya have had theirs, mind you, as key players Maurice Odumbe and Thomas Odoyo finally succumbed to the inevitable Asian fiefdoms-cum-gambling squads a few seasons ago, and Bangladesh too; but as the latter have done, Zimbabwe will at some point have to dust them up and salvage the broken pieces they have had to make do with since.

But for now, finely tuned from the most testing pitches in Bangladesh, and after enduring a contest in between against Sri Lanka, the Chevrons of Zimbabwe are well-poised to dominate the coming five-match one-day series against Kenya.

But first they will have to contend with one Steve Tikolo, Masai of Nairobi.

Twelve years after making his debut in Cuttack against India back in 1996, the 37-year-old, now in the twilight of his career, is still the bedrock of Kenyan cricket.

Stephen Ogonji Tikolo, and no other, is to Kenya what Andy Flower was to Zimbabwe.

After leading his country to a semifinals place in the cricket World Cup six years ago in South Africa, the former Sussex player remains surely the best batsman in modern era never to have played Test cricket.

With a First Class average of 51, Tikolo is three runs higher than the celebrated Murray Goodwin in Zimbabwe, and has 14 more than the lamentable Grant Flower, at more or less the same strike. Given a go at it, with arguably a more solid technique than his peers above, who knows what heights the nuggetty batsman might have scaled in the even and sedate pace of Test cricket.

It was Tikolo's 102 runs in the team's contest against Zimbabwe that proved the difference.

If anybody stands between victory and redemption for the Zimbabweans, it is the Masai.

What Has Zimbabwe Cricket Got in Its Reserves?

Conant Masocha — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 09:20:21 -0500

Bilbo Baggins, caught between a rock and a hard place would have empathised with Zimbabwe cricket when he was asked, “What has it got in its pocketses?”

But where his acquaintances would hide behind some stolen treasure, perhaps in future optimism, there doesn’t appear to be any such reassurance for Zimbabwe at present. The game in that country is once again caught out in the open, with not a shrub in sight.

So what has it got in its pocketses?

With the just ended tri-series in Bangladesh wit Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe mercifully fading into another dim memory of ineptness by all teams involved (only the final sparked, and still score remained sub-200), and the season looking yet again looking thoroughly short of matches for the last ranked team, one has the familiar feeling that the answer to that question remains: not a lot.

The silence emanating from all things cricket in Zimbabwe—national, provincial, the virtually non existent club game—makes their now far off return to Test cricket almost a fantasy.

Five years after getting rid of all the experienced former players and administrators by Ozias Bvute and Peter Chingoka, there is no sense of fresh start still, or even a new season; just the unmerciful lampooning by critics of a national coach accused of being dull and unimaginative: the national team hasn’t reached a score of 220 in seven innings of international one day cricket.

Lat month the Sri Lankan captain was unequivocal about where the blame lay—a lack of match practice—for the home team batsmens' lack of aptitude in an earlier tour to Zimbabwe where the visitors limped home 5-0 in a one day series.

Limped, because after the thrashing of the Chevrons in the first two matches; and where abler teams would have snuffled the fight out the home side, the visitors barely got away it the next three.

Put that way, it was Zimbabwe who lost the next three rather than Sri Lanka who won them, and got whitewashed instead of coming out 3-2 victors.

This, then, is what we have now learnt of this Zimbabwe side. Firstly after conceding no more than 225 an innings in the last ten matches, six of them against Kumar Sangakkara, Sanath Jayasuriya and company, they have a decent attack in Elton Chigumbura, Edward Rainsford and medium pacer Tawanda Mpariwa, who has been quickest to 50 wickets in Zimbabwean cricket history, faster to the mark than even bygone legend Eddo Brandes (England and David Lloyd would remember him well); but albeit one which is also opened by their captain and spin bowler Prosper Utseya at a miserly economy rate of four runs an over and a strike rate that is climbing down every time.

Secondly, their batting is profligate when it should be miserly, and constipated when runs are badly in need: should Vusi Sibanda retire now or should he be sent to the subcontinent for an extended stay until he learns to bat at spin bowling?

After all, it seems unforgivably criminal that such a lavishly gifted player should spend days practicing a defensive shot only to come out days later off a botched pull shot.

When will batsman Hamilton Masakadza, deified by Andy Flower as a teenager still to make his debut, reveal himself as the next Dave Houghton?

Should their managing director Ozias Bvute be running an export business rather than a game he knows barely anything of?

After all, was it not him who in that lamentable rebel stand-off who gloated about “the array“ of youngsters—Tinashe Panyangara, Elton Chigumbura, Tatenda Taibu—in his weaponry now that they had been finally given a chance to showcase their talents?

“Even when the Flowers were there Zimbabwe would win the odd game,” he said on national television, fresh from another boardroom brawl.

Given the ineptness of some senior players then, these were statements that could be humoured. But given the Chevrons’ desperate capitulations in recent games—indeed since the rebels—it seems that not even the traditional scatter-shot and bits and pieces players produced nowadays in the league can save Zimbabwe.

“Just give them two or three years to gel and these youngsters will be world beaters,” said Bvute.

Problem is it’s been five years now and they are world doormats, fancied by even Ireland and Kenya.

And Panyangara: where is he now? Does it matter to him that a little over eight months since the youngster made a somewhat spectacular entry in international cricket—six wickets in a demolition of Australia in a U19 World Cup, and a first ball scalp of the imperious Mathew Hayden—he was in hospital, one of three victims of a stress fracture due to over work on their young bodies.

Is it of any concern to ZC that a few weeks out of hospital the youngster was out of the country and out of cricket, disillusioned by the neglect he had received while injured?

It seems pointedly obvious therefore that, a political solution to the country's problem regardless, which is impacting negatively at all other facets of life in Zimbabwe, they need to entice some of their players back to change the side dramatically, as Ray Price’s return has shown.

Questions remain to that effect and they all point towards ZC. Will Panyangara ever play cricket again, or has he lost love of both the administration and the game. What about Sean Ervine, already emerging at the time as Zimbabwe’s best batsman and once touted by Brian Lara as going one day to be a better player than even Andy Flower?

Will former captain Heath Streak ever be invited to be part of a setup to impact valuable knowledge to a crop of youngsters who are badly in need of it?

Is anybody at ZC trying at all?