Visitors have endured political chaos and miserable results over 22 years but cricket is finally a national game
Twenty-two years is a long time, even in a sport that measures its games in days and its history in centuries. The last time England played a Test match against Zimbabwe, in 2003, Rob Key was in the middle order instead of the managing director’s job, Jimmy Anderson was a 20-year-old tearaway playing in his very first series, and the England and Wales Cricket Board was just about to launch the world’s very first professional Twenty20 tournament. Zimbabwean cricket has changed, too. Back then the team was in the earliest stages of a transformation that was meant to turn cricket from a minority game, played by the small white population, into a sport that better represented the whole country.
They have been hard years, riven by player strikes, political interference, maladministration and a miserable drop-off in results. The team temporarily withdrew from Test cricket, suspended their domestic competition and were repeatedly censured by the International Cricket Council. They lost so many players through emigration to England, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand, that even now you could build a hell of a good Zimbabwean squad out of people who are making a living overseas. And yet, at the end of it all, the process was, by one important measure, a success. The squad that came on tour in 2003 was majority white, the team that has come this year is majority black.
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