Leading Edge: Finally, not only one side has all the guns in Zimbabwe

Sunday Times

TELFORD VICE, Cape Town

“THE problem with Zimbabwe,” a proper journalist, the kind who has spent the odd night in jail for daring to do his job properly, told me a year or 10 ago, “is that one side has all the guns.”

Quite. And, of course, that side is the wrong side. So you have to feel for the Zimbos for again ending up on the wrong end of the arms equation in their test match and one-day games against SA.

Truth be told, not only were their arms about as threatening as a pacifist on Prozac, their legs, guts, hearts and minds were, too.

They played four, they lost four. Worse, they were moered stukkend four times. Not even when SA got it wrong could Zimbabwe get it right.

One issue with Zimbabweans is that they are too polite. Blame it on all that pseudo-British education and an enduring tendency towards Anglophilia, hints of which are apparent in comrade Robert Gabriel Mugabe himself - those snappy suits, that unbendable upper lip, enunciation that could cut glass.

Another problem is that Zimbabweans behave around South Africans like South Africans behave around Australians. The difference is SA have found a way to beat Australia.

So, eyebrows have remained firmly unraised for the past two weeks except for a few hours of defiance in the test, at least part of which can be blamed on SA pretending to respect Zimbabwe, and decent bowling in the second ODI. SA are thrashing Zim? Again? Of course they are. What did you expect?

Which is well and good in terms of winning and losing and all things nice. But what value does it hold for a SA team who are doing their damnedest to ensure they avoid suffering their 19th - or is it their 20th? - nervous breakdown at next year’s World Cup?

Making a noise about beating Zimbabwe is the cricket equivalent of flattening a tackling dummy at a rugby practice and calling it a big hit. If the dummy had sidestepped the tackler, now that would be a story. Thing is, a team of tackling dummies could not have performed much worse against SA than Zimbabwe did.

So, SA are to be commended for toning down the triumphalism that can kill common sense. As Faf du Plessis said this week, “It’s very important that we don’t focus on the opposition.” Especially, he did not add, when the opposition do not merit a flicker of focus.

Instead, SA have quietly settled their batting order and had a look at their bowling depth. Whoever decided to give all the players who had not featured in the first two ODIs - Rilee Rossouw, Marchant de Lange and Mthokozisi Shezi - a go in the third game, and to hell with obsessing over achieving a whitewash in a meaningless series, deserves a drink. Well done.

Now, the pudding is about to eaten, what with Australia having arrived to complete the line-up for the triangular series that starts in Harare on Monday. With the Aussies will come the truth of how useful, or not, SA’s time north of the Limpopo has been.

For a change in Zimbabwe, all the guns are not only on one side.