Zimbabwean Cricket Crisis
Cricket in Zimbabwe was a crisis that lasted mainly from 2003 to 2007 where player withdrawals such as the "Black-armband protest" by Andy Flower and Henry Olonga along with a mass loss of players in 2004 due to a general strike resulted in very poor performances by the national team. Presently Zimbabwe is in the period of rebuilding itself as the domestic structure was re-structured in 2009. Many people allege that the administration of cricket in Zimbabwe is corrupted by the influence of Robert Mugabe's government, who are widely accused of following racist, in particular anti-white, policies. Positive signs began to emerge for Zimbabwe after the 2007 Cricket World Cup especially when in the 2007 World Twenty20 Zimbabwe defeated what was arguably the strongest side in the world at the time, Australia. Along with this Zimbabwe gradually began to show encouraging signs of improvement and four years later they returned to the highest format of the game, Test Cricket. In their first match since their return in August 2011 they comprehensibly defeated Bangladesh.
Read more about Zimbabwean Cricket Crisis: Crisis Emerges, Team Hits Rock Bottom, Hopes Fade in 2006, Cricket Resurgence (2007-present)
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“All cries are thin and terse;
The field has droned the summer’s final mass;
A cricket like a dwindled hearse
Crawls from the dry grass.”
—Richard Wilbur (b. 1921)
“Most observers of the French Revolution, especially the clever and noble ones, have explained it as a life-threatening and contagious illness. They have remained standing with the symptoms and have interpreted these in manifold and contrary ways. Some have regarded it as a merely local ill. The most ingenious opponents have pressed for castration. They well noticed that this alleged illness is nothing other than the crisis of beginning puberty.”
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