Zimpapers Logo

Sikhumbuzo Moyo Senior Sports Reporter
ZIMBABWE Cricket (ZC) is swimming in debt of close to $20 million and some creditors have won writs of execution against the association. In January this year, NMB Bank went to court over a $2.5 million loan facility extended to ZC in 2012.

The government is, however, happy with measures the ZC board has put in place to liquidate the debt, which is about three times that of troubled Zifa.

Zifa owes its creditors close to $7 million.

Sport and Recreation Minister Makhosini Hlongwane said the Zifa debt was nothing compared to that of ZC.

“Obviously if you compare Zifa and cricket; cricket owes three, four times more than what Zifa is owing. It appears to us that cricket has a very clear plan in place to amortise their debt and we are very happy with that kind of situation,” said Hlongwane.

He said what government was more concerned about is the poor performance of the Chevrons as witnessed in the 3-0 whitewash by India in the recent one-day international series against India in Harare.

“Obviously there are issues on the pitch that we are not happy with as government. We are obviously looking at cricket very actively on our dashboard and we are going to look at issues, particularly around performance.

“We are concerned with the direction cricket is taking. We take note of the many changes cricket has taken with a view to improve performance, but it doesn’t seem to be translating at this juncture to the kind of performance one would want to see,” Hlongwane said.