Left heartbroken by the International Cricket Council’s sudden shock decision to ban Zimbabwe Cricket Board, the International cricketer of Zimbabwe Sikandar Raza has said he doesn’t know what to do or just go burn his kits and apply for job.
ICC has banned Zimbabwe for Government interference and not to get its house in order. Zimbabwe Cricket has to get its house in order by the next ICC meeting in October.
Sikandar Raza while talking to ESPNCricInfo said that all his teammates are shell shocked and don’t know what to do.
As ESPN quoted him saying there was disappointment, despair and heartbreak among his Zimbabwe team-mates, as they frantically called each other and exchanged messages in the minutes following the ICC’s decision to suspend Zimbabwe with immediate effect over ‘government interference’.
Raza said his team-mates’ emotions were similar to the way they felt after the World Cup Qualifier last year, when their defeat to UAE cost them a place in the 2019 World Cup. But the situation was a lot worse, he said, as players remain in the dark over their immediate and foreseeable future. Zimbabwe are scheduled to play a T20 tri-series in September in Bangladesh, against the hosts and Afghanistan, in the lead-up to the Men’s World T20 Qualifier in October in the UAE. While Zimbabwe remain suspended, representative teams will not be allowed to participate in any ICC events, making their presence in the Women’s T20 World Cup Qualifier in August and Men’s World T20 Qualifier highly unlikely.
“We are all pretty heart-broken at the moment,” Raza was quoted by ESPNcricinfo. “We are still in shock to be honest, seeing how our international career can come to an end like that. Not just for one player, but for the whole country. I am not coming to terms with it so easily, and I am sure my team-mates feel the same way. Where do we go from here? Is there a way out?
“I don’t know what is the way out. We have been told that we have been suspended but not told for how long. [A] two-year
[suspension]
could basically bring an end to a lot of careers. I don’t know the conditions but to totally suspend us from playing cricket, while you allow whoever is responsible to get our house in order, you basically stop cricket in Zimbabwe. I don’t know how one can do that but it has happened to us now.”