With the rain again threatening to disrupt proceedings, the Logan Cup resumes this weekend. The matches are as follows:

Mashonaland v Matabeleland, at Harare Sports Club
CFX Academy v Manicaland, at Alexandra Sports Club
Midlands v Mashonaland A, at Kwekwe Sports Club

As the County Club ground is still unfit for play after so much rain, their match against Manicaland has again been moved to Alexandra Sports Club.

The most important match is that between Mashonaland and Matabeleland at Harare Sports Club. Mashonaland, with three straight victories, are likely Logan Cup winners, but Matabeleland will keep themselves in with a small chance if they can beat them this weekend. Much depends on the visitors' fragile batting, as they have much strength in bowling, and will be hoping that the often suspect Sports Club pitch will give them assistance.

The return of Heath Streak will be a great bonus for Matabeleland. One hopes, though, that the presence of the national captain will also preserve this match from the unpleasantness that took place in Mashonaland's fixture against Manicaland two weeks ago. It is good to know that ZCU chief executive Dave Ellman-Brown, interviewed in this issue, is very strongly against the type of behaviour that certain Mashonaland players have exhibited. Mr Ellman-Brown is above all a man who gets things done, and so we can be assured that if unseemly behaviour takes place, the matter will not rest there.

Mr Ellman-Brown recently returned from several weeks in Australia, for both business and holiday, and his report on the ICC meeting and his views on international cricket are included this week. As it was a long issue, we have held over his views on the domestic scene until next week.

Our biographies of the Academy players continue with Ian Coulson, Guy Croxford and Blessing Mahwire. This completes the set apart from the injured Sean Ervine, who hopes to be fit to play this weekend and whose biography we plan to include next week. We have our usual provincial and club cricket reports, and on the statistical side include the detailed career records of Paul Strang in Tests and one-day internationals, and averages for the UCB Bowl competition and Logan Cup (to date), compiled by Fiona Butchart of the ZCU.

Unfortunately we have not yet been able to interview any of the Zimbabwe Board XI who played against Western Province B in Cape Town in the two Bowl finals last weekend. Regular readers will no doubt be aware that they staged a superb fightback to win the one-day competition, but were not able to repeat the recovery in the three-day match. It would appear that the top-order batsmen let the side down. In the one-day game and the first innings of the three-day match, they hardly got out of the starting blocks. In the second innings they made some good starts but failed to follow through to the major innings that was necessary.

It was very disappointing from a team where almost every player has enjoyed international experience, and probably condemns them to another season in the Bowl, rather than the promotion to the SuperSport series that they had been aiming for. Yet the ZCU averages show that 25 different players took part in the three-day competition and 23 in the one-day. Some of the changes were unavoidable, especially with three different captains all being called up to the national side in succession. The selectors wanted to give different players opportunities, but it was at the expense of a settled side. However, this cannot be used as an excuse for feeble batting, and players who have faced international attacks need to ask themselves why they were unable to handle a very determined but definitely second-team Western Province attack.

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