ACS Overseas First-Class Annual 2014

Zimbabwe in 2013/14 Test matches continued to be an infrequent experience for the Zimbabwe national side. During the whole period under review – two English seasons and one overseas season, some eighteen months in all – Zimbabwe played only five Tests. For comparison, their closest rivals at the bottom of the Test rankings, West Indies and Bangladesh, played respectively thirteen and eight in the same period. It is perhaps inevitable that the lower-ranked countries will struggle to arrange as full an international programme as the likes of South Africa, Australia and England. But in Zimbabwe’s case, this difficulty is aggravated by the Board’s chronic financial problems, which caused the cancellation, at a very late stage, of a tour by Sri Lanka scheduled for October 2013. The upshot was that Zimbabwe’s Test programme was confined to two two-match rubbers in the 2013 season, and a one-off game in 2014 against top-ranked neighbours South Africa. All these matches were at home: tours present an even greater financial challenge than home Tests. Scorecards for these games will be found in the respective sections dealing with matches played in the 2013 and 2014 seasons. Yet in the face of all these difficulties, the actual results, when the side managed to make it onto the field, might be considered satisfactory; or at least, not so bad as might have been feared. The two rubbers in 2013 were both drawn. Against Bangladesh, in two matches that by all accounts were a poor advertisement for Test cricket, this was an unremarkable result; but the shared rubber against Pakistan was little short of a triumph, especially since Zimbabwe was highly competitive throughout both matches. The win in the second Test, only Zimbabwe’s eleventh in all, was their first against anyone other than Bangladesh since defeating India as long ago as 2001. The single 2014 game against South Africa resulted predictably in a heavy defeat but even here, some comfort could be taken from the fact that it was by no means a rout. Zimbabwe’s Test programme, attenuated though it was, at least contained enough matches to result in a formal Test ranking. Zimbabwe found themselves in ninth place and thus able to claim whatever bragging rights might be available in their rivalry with Bangladesh. But the weakest of the established Test sides, West Indies, even after a very poor season, remained far ahead of both Zimbabwe and Bangladesh. So this poses the question: where does Zimbabwe (and by implication, Bangladesh) really stand in relation to Test cricket generally? Are they, as many would argue, an unworthy side on which Test status should never have been bestowed? Or are they, despite their relative weakness, legitimately within the magic circle of Test cricket? After all, if Test nations are to be ranked, someone must occupy the lower places: a side’s being last, or next to last, cannot mean ipso facto that it is not of Test standard. The argument against Zimbabwe (and Bangladesh) must therefore be not so much that they are ranked so low but that they never attain any higher position: Zimbabwe (when ranked) and Bangladesh have occupied the bottom positions since the ICC rankings were introduced in 2003. A further point is not just the number of their Test defeats but the manner of them; both countries have been on the wrong end of some absurdly one-sided matches, although it should be added in fairness that utter routs (as opposed to more normal defeats) have tended to become less frequent. But there is another way of examining this: to ask not how much worse Zimbabwe and Bangladesh are than the other Test sides, but how much better they are (if at all) than leading non-Test teams. 625