With Manicaland's first-league season due to start in the next few weeks, most of the young coaching professionals have returned from their U.K. winter employment. Alec Taylor, Kingsley Went, Richie Sims and Neil Ferreira will join new academy graduates Justin Lewis, Ian Coulson and Leon Soma in a tighter than normal fight for first team places. Missing from last season will be Patrick Gada (emigrated to the U.S.A.) and Jason Young (future undecided – awaiting developments in the U.K.).

Mutare Sports Club was the venue last weekend for the second annual winter districts cricket festival. The five teams that normally contest the social winter districts league come together for four 10-over matches culminating in a plate and final on Sunday afternoon. The teams were made up mostly of farmers and farming evictees from Odzi, Old Umtali, Upper Bvumba and Burma Valley, together with a Hillcrest College Old Boys side.

The emphasis was on fun and forgetting the dire state of farming and Zimbabwe's problems. Sponsors had stuck Z$70 000 (about U.S.$235) behind the bar and the amount remained unbeaten after two days – a sure sign that Zimbabwe's currency will continue to attract the international bargain-hunters. Performances ranged from a top end of awful with jeering wives, girlfriends and fellow-contestants applauding every mishap and shortcoming. Eventual winners Hillcrest Old Boys were booed every step of the way for taking themselves and their cricket too seriously during a boring victory over fellow finalists Burma Valley.

The previous weekend I had an opportunity to experience firsthand the results of the Zimbabwe Cricket Union's pilot project for black cricket advancement at the (soon to be renamed) Churchill high school in Harare. Promising black cricketers discovered at coaching clinics around the country are found places at Churchill where a cricket culture is fostered. Pupils receive coaching at the CFX Academy, which is a short distance down the road.

Travelling from Mutare as umpire/coach with Hillcrest College's under-16 side, our team was given a taste of the uncompromising future of Zimbabwe cricket. Churchill's new black professionals destroyed all four (mostly white) Mutare teams in humiliating and soulless fashion.

Over lunch after watching Churchill race to 268 for three in 35 overs, my fellow umpire (a Churchill teacher) confessed the school has too many players and too few coaches. Each age group have four teams vying for promotion, with highly visible classmates Tatenda Taibu and Hamilton Masakadza as role models spurring them on. One gets the sensation of Mike Tyson goes to Lord's watching these `out the ghetto' no-prisoners road warriors. Results and personal statistics take precedence over everything as potential future contracts are eyed. Umpiring decisions are routinely disputed and umpires derided in an atmosphere reminiscent of Lord of the Flies. The teachers are ill-equipped to moderate excessive behaviour, being at best first-generation cricket watchers themselves.

Whilst it is exciting watching the emerging talent of this new breed of Zimbabwe player, one can't help but recall Don Bradman's words that "young players are the trustees of the game". The Z.C.U.'s problems are about to get bigger.

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