Note: This report was accidentally omitted from issue 17. Our thanks to Colin Saunders for pointing this out.

During the Logan Cup match between Midlands and the CFX Academy at Kwekwe Sports Club, the Midlands chairman Ken Connelly spoke to John Ward about how his committee prepared for the match under very difficult conditions, and about future plans for cricket in the province.

We hadn't been expecting to play a match here, as it was originally scheduled for Country Club in Harare, but when the ground there was too wet to play, the match was rescheduled for Kwekwe at short notice.

It was quite an interesting situation. We have had as much rain here as anybody in the country, I guess, and by Wednesday it didn't look good. Then on Thursday we had a huge amount of rain; in fact, most of the field was under water.

Dave Houghton and the Academy guys came down here on Thursday and had a look at the lake we had down at the bottom of the field. They thought there was no chance of getting play under way at all, and they thought they might be going back to Harare as early as Friday night. To get the water off the outfield, we dug a couple of holes there in the outfield and put down a submersible pump and pipes running into the bush and into the car park. We swept all the water down into these holes and pumped a couple of tonnes of water off the outfield.

Fortunately when we didn't have rain on Friday, we managed to start playing on Saturday morning. I don't think we've ever done that down here before, but it worked. We actually dug a trench and had guys pushing, and the sheer volume of the water kept it running out into the bush. We had eight casual workers, five Sports Club staff and quite a lot of us out there working, so there were at least fifteen of us all working at it.

I tried cutting the outfield myself with a hand mower because we couldn't get a tractor on the field, and you can see my efforts were largely in vain. I did as much as I could until start of play. We like to have our field in the best shape we possibly can, but it wasn't possible this time. We were just glad we managed to get cricket under way at all.

We managed to keep the pitch dry throughout. We did our homework and with all the rain earlier in the week we had four covers on the actual playing surface, and at least another two on the entire pitch. The water never really got through those four covers at any stage. It was always playable; it was really just a matter of the outfield. It was a pretty good effort by the staff here; Tim Savory is the groundsman and he was very involved. Colin Sanders and myself got stuck in and we got a game on, so we're quite pleased.

Down beyond the far corner of the ground, Goldridge College, a new private high school, is being built. It's just in its very first phase, so it will expand over the years. It was previously just raw bush out there, and the golf course is a bit further out.

Just on the left of the far sightscreen there is an old stone arch standing by itself, and that used to be an old baseball diamond. In fact the American Eagles, their national team, played against a Rhodesian side there in about 1954. What we plan to do now is to develop that as a second cricket field as a joint venture with Goldridge College.

Kwekwe Sports Club now have two sides in the national league, one in first league and one in third. The Queens club, another Kwekwe club, have their own field on the other side of town. Quite often when we have two home games we have to use Goldridge Primary School field, which is far too small. It's the size of a hockey field, and even in third league you do need a suitably sized field. The school will use the new field midweek and on Saturdays, while the club will use it on Sundays. That project is going ahead immediately and we hope to be playing on it in September 2002.

On the other side, concerning ZCU-sponsored projects, the biggest one going on at the moment is the changing rooms. We previously had big communal areas with showers, toilets, etc., but we are told that for international sides coming here they prefer their independent facilities. So there will be a few walls knocked down and plumbing rearranged, and that's under way now. That will be ready for the first scheduled game at Kwekwe Sports Club in three weeks' time; we weren't expecting to play here this weekend.

So that's going ahead now, sponsored by Zimbabwe Cricket Union. We have also fenced the entire perimeter of the ground, which goes quite a long way into the bush. That was necessary because we've had so much theft here. Our covers were stolen once; our boundary rope was stolen; half the picket fence was stolen and I'm sure burnt as firewood, and it was almost uncontrollable, despite having security guards. This has helped, but unfortunately some people stole some of the fence now, so we're not winning entirely! But we'll get there.

Next year we hope that Gweru will be playing in the national fourth league; we started them off this year, and we are encouraging a development side from Redcliff, which will be an all-black side, I should imagine. They will be fully sponsored by Midlands, and hopefully will be in the national fourth league by September 2002. So there will be five sides from Midlands playing national league cricket, whereas two years ago there was one. Those are our goals and I think we'll get there.

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