Heath Streak quits Zimbabwe to captain Warwickshire

Earlier this year, in March, Heath Streak patched up with the ZCU and returned to play for Zimbabwe. The honeymoon has apparently been shortlived as Streak was yesterday named by Warwickshire as their skipper for the next two seasons.

There is some ambiguity in whether he has closed the door on returning to Zimbabwe as a player. Thus, it is not entirely clear if he has joined the book cricket league.

Reuters UK quotes him as saying

I haven't closed the door on future involvement in Zimbabwe cricket in areas such as commentary and coaching.

Cricinfo, presumably using an agency report as the basis for their report, quotes him thus

I cannot rule out playing for Zimbabwe in the future, outside my Warwickshire contract which takes priority. I am not sure what the Zimbabwe Cricket plans are. I have not discussed anything with them, and I'm still willing to play club and provincial cricket.

Meanwhile Streak's ex(?)-teammates have conveyed to their cricket board that they did not agree with the ZCU's decision to sack coach Phil Simmons and replace him with Kevin Curran. Curran is better known to Indian cricket fans as the chap who helped reduce India to 17/5 in a World Cup game in 1983 before Kapil Dev's murderous assault. In fact he wasn't done with his heroics. Chasing 267, he came in at 103/5 and belted 73 to take Zimbabwe very close to victory.

Back to the present situation though. Simmons came under a lot of fire very early on in his coaching stint as Zimbabwe lost a test series to Bangladesh and lost a 5 one-day series from being 2-0 up and given Zimbabwe's woes on and off the field of present, including a revolving-door coach policy, the three year stint mentioned in his contract was never going to become a reality.

Update: Stuart Carlisle has announced his retirement protesting against the politics in Zimbabwe cricket.

Labels: book cricket, retire