Andrew Hall: Tell us about the donation from CricInfo

Peter Longworth: Well I’m very impressed and surprised that we’re getting such a generous donation from the private sector. What you call £80,000 is five million dollars in Zimbabwe and buys an awful lot. The areas it’s going to are exactly those the money would be best spent in the way of sports development here. We always think of sports development like kids kicking balls about, but there’s a real developmental aspect to this. The people you’re going to be helping will be learning skills that will be useful in later life. They’ll be learning how to play by rules, and learning partnerships and teamwork, and it’s also creating something that is going to make them proud of themselves and really responsible members of society

Andrew Hall: And hopefully be playing England one day?

Peter Longworth: We’ve been looking at a 1 day series where England had been pretty dominant. But what we want to see is more young people from the communities coming into mainstream cricket and I think this is the key thing – too few people who are showing real signs of talent are making it into the Test teams and the One Day Teams and what I’m hoping is that ZCU can use this money to bring more and more of these people through and to spread the communal message of cricket.

We saw when the American Davis Cup tennis team came over recently what a huge multicultural surge of support there was for Zimbabwe. And we want to see more of that in the cricket sphere, and I think this will be very helpful.

Andrew Hall: What do you think of the standard of these young players?

Peter Longworth: It’s the first time I’ve been to this particular school. We put a lot of resources into lots of other institutions in the area. But I really am quite surprised to see how well the boys are playing their strokes. I’ve just been speaking to Mark Alleyne who says that he’s seeing quite a lot of good little cricketers here. Let’s hope we see a lot of big cricketers of this. I must say that we get a lot of support from any British teams that come over to Zimbabwe, whether it’s rugby, cricket – we had Andy Cole out here recently. And I think what the cricket team is doing here is really deepening and extending our understanding of what is happening in these urban areas. And also of what Britain has to offer generally.

I think one of the things that it is important for the world outside Zimbabwe to see is the enthusiasm that is evident on this pitch. We know a lot about the economic problems that Zimbabwe is going through, and we know that a lot needs to be done, and a lot needs to be done before Zimbabwe achieves its great potential – it could become one of the great economic countries of Africa. But what we see here that is more important is the spirit of its people. Anybody who comes to this country will be able to detect what you can see here – life, friendliness, a great place to visit, a great place to live. What we want to make sure of is that when we’re supporting Zimbabwe we’re supporting it in a way where everyone gets it right.