Today 22 years ago, Zimbabwe played their first ever test match when they took on a full strength Indian team at Harare sports club... It may have been 22 years ago, but I still remember it as if it was yesterday. I was still at school in Worcester, a beautiful town which is situated about 120km, give or take from Cape Town. I remember the excitement building up to that historical test match... It gave me sleepless nights, and I drove my school mates mad with names such as Dave Houghton, Andy and Grant Flower, and my teen age hero Eddo Brandes. It was pretty hard talking about a team who nobody else cared about, all I wanted was to have somebody to share my fears and excitement with, and fortunately I had a fellow Zimbabwean who was doing a piano tuning course. Jeremy Saint and I became good friends as the big day approached, and when it finally arrived, I was besides myself with excitement, worry and sadness. The sadness I felt was because I would have given anything in the world to have been at Harare sprorts club on that historic day... I could just imagine my dad and my late brother Gary sitting together. Gary would be telling me everything in detail as he always did when we went to international matches together... Sadly, I was in a hostel, and the only way I could keep up with events, was by tuning into the BBC world service on shortwave. I had also saved up as much pocket money as possible, so that I could phone the what was then known as Radio 1 studio to get regular updates. Zimbabwe won the toss, and elected to bat and ground out 456 runs in their first innings, thanks to captain Dave Houghton who top scored with 121. It was an innings totally out of character as Houghton put his head down and grafted long and hard to ensure that Zimbabwe got themselves to a total of respectability. There were also half centuries for Grant Flower [82] and Andrew Flower [59]. I remember thinking to myself at the time that one day I would like to somehow be involved in this game that has given me so much pleasure and heartache. :)
Posted on: Sat, 18 Oct 2014 07:23:31 +0000
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