Alistair Campbell: We must put politics to the back of our minds

Alistair Campbell

July 19, 2001

Well it's me again, writing from the bustling city of Bulawayo. The two-Test series against West Indies gets under way amid a new round of political wrangling within the Zimbabwe Cricket Union.

Cricket has now made the front page of our newspapers, with stories pertaining to racism that exists in cricket in this country. Certain lobby groups have engaged the media to fight their corner and seem intent on taking full advantage of the political climate of this country, even if it means the destruction of Zimbabwe cricket. It is a sad day when politics takes centre stage in sport, but I suppose when this happens we just have to soldier on and hope that sanity prevails and a solution is found - cricket needs to be the winner.

As professional cricketers, though, we have to put what is going on behind the scenes, out of our minds and concentrate on the business of playing cricket and playing well. It is going to be a very tough series as the West Indies are very confident and playing good cricket. After winning the Coca-Cola triangular series, they have played well in their warm-up games and look to be getting their house in order.

Their batsmen have scored lots of runs, which is a good sign for them as it has been a bit brittle in the recent past. Although they have had some injuries in the bowling department with Dillion and Cuffy having to go home, their reserves have been impressive. All in all they seem to have got a very good unit together, even without Lara, and we will have to pull out all the stops if we are to produce some of the cricket we played to win in the last Test against India.

Without Andrew Flower we have a big hole in our batting line-up; this was proved in the recent tri-series. However, we are going to have to raise our game another notch to make up for his absence and get competitive totals on the board.

Tatenda Taibu is set to make his Test debut which will be a real test for him, but he is a confident young man and should pull through with flying colours. The selectors have asked yours truly to open the batting after scoring 140 against the tourists in the just concluded war-up game this will be a different but great challenge.

All in all it is set up to be a great series, even though the best players on either side are out of action. It will be nice to get back into the swing of things after a two-week break from international cricket. I only hope that everyone can focus on the cricket and clear their minds of these other very real issues - we owe it to ourselves and to the game of cricket.

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