Zimbabwe announce domestic overhaul

Zimbabwe Cricket has announced a revised domestic cricket structure that will see five national select sides play in a national league competition beginning next season.

Five new sides - , the national team, Zimbabwe A, a Board XI, Zimbabwe Development and the National Academy - will take part. At a meeting on Friday, ZC said the objective of the new national league format was ''to create a professional, well organised and competitive domestic league that is free from individual politics".

It continued: ''The technical challenges being faced by ZC today relate to the lack of a clearly defined technical structure. ZC needs to put in place a technical structure that is well defined in terms of role with clear and defined outputs in order to measure performance.

"It is against this background that a workshop on structure development is required before the onset of the 2006-07 season. This workshop will deal with issues of communication, job descriptions, politicking among others.''

Meanwhile, the Logan Cup, the country's first-class tournament, is set to resume with three new sides. Although Manicaland and Midlands remain as they were, the two old provinces of Mashonaland and Matabeleland have been disbanded and their places will be taken by Harare Metropolitan and Bulawayo Metropolitan. The fifth side will be Masvingo. "What will happen is that the smaller provinces will be swallowed up by these five for the Logan Cup," source said. "With time, they say, they will become independent and play on their own."

ZC came under intense fire after it failed to stage the Logan Cup in 2005-06. At the time a spokesman insisted that it had merely been postponed and that the seasons had been rejigged.

Cricinfo first broke the story that the board was planning the domestic overhaul earlier in the year.