England restore Test cricket relations with Zimbabwe
For Ben Stokes's men the unique fixture provides a tune-up before India visit in June for a marquee five-Test series, while for Craig Ervine's tourists it could be the only chance in their careers to play an international on English soil.
The last red-ball encounter between the sides came in 2003, James Anderson's debut series, and they have not met in any format since 2007.
"(England) is the only team I haven't played against, so (this) would basically be my debut men's international game against them," 38-year-old Sean Williams, Zimbabwe's premier Test batsman with five hundreds and an average of 44, told Reuters after supplanting Anderson as world cricket's longest-tenured player.
"When we talk about a 20-year career, that is an incredible thing to think about."
Both cricket and diplomatic relations soured by the mid-2000s, when Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe embarked on an economy-crippling land redistribution program which displaced thousands of white farmers and left the African country isolated from the West.
Number-two ranked England will look to 'Bazball' exponents Harry Brook, Joe Root and Stokes to bat their opponents into submission and ease the burden on an inexperienced seam department in the abbreviated fixture.
Gus Atkinson, on 11 caps, will lead an injury-hit attack missing veterans Mark Wood and Chris Woakes as Essex mainstay Sam Cook, with 321 first-class wickets at 20 apiece, prepares for a debut.
"He's kept knocking the door down, fair play to him," said England selector Luke Wright.
For the 10th-ranked visitors to defy all odds and catch England off-guard in Nottingham, leadership will be sought from those with local knowledge.
Impressive strike bowler Blessing Muzarabani, averaging 22 for 51 Test wickets, spent two seasons with Northamptonshire and offers a point of difference with his two-metre frame, while top-order batsmen Ben Curran and Nick Welch, along with power-hitter Sikandar Raza, also have county experience.
Zimbabwe have languished in cricket's doldrums since the turn of the century, but used to punch above their weight in regular spars with the former colonial power.
Their rivalry peaked during a 1996-97 tour when then-England coach David Lloyd infamously declared "we flippin' murdered 'em" upon drawing a Test series, prematurely claiming moral victory before being clean-swept on the 50-over leg and conceding a hat-trick to chicken-farmer-turned-paceman Eddo Brandes.
The restoration of cricketing ties between England and Zimbabwe will be completed on Thursday when Trent Bridge hosts a standalone four-day Test between the nations.
For Ben Stokes's men the unique fixture provides a tune-up before India visit in June for a marquee five-Test series, while for Craig Ervine's tourists it could be the only chance in their careers to play an international on English soil.
The last red-ball encounter between the sides came in 2003, James Anderson's debut series, and they have not met in any format since 2007.
"(England) is the only team I haven't played against, so (this) would basically be my debut men's international game against them," 38-year-old Sean Williams, Zimbabwe's premier Test batsman with five hundreds and an average of 44, told Reuters after supplanting Anderson as world cricket's longest-tenured player.
"When we talk about a 20-year career, that is an incredible thing to think about."
Both cricket and diplomatic relations soured by the mid-2000s, when Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe embarked on an economy-crippling land redistribution program which displaced thousands of white farmers and left the African country isolated from the West.
Number-two ranked England will look to 'Bazball' exponents Harry Brook, Joe Root and Stokes to bat their opponents into submission and ease the burden on an inexperienced seam department in the abbreviated fixture.
Gus Atkinson, on 11 caps, will lead an injury-hit attack missing veterans Mark Wood and Chris Woakes as Essex mainstay Sam Cook, with 321 first-class wickets at 20 apiece, prepares for a debut.
"He's kept knocking the door down, fair play to him," said England selector Luke Wright.
For the 10th-ranked visitors to defy all odds and catch England off-guard in Nottingham, leadership will be sought from those with local knowledge.
Impressive strike bowler Blessing Muzarabani, averaging 22 for 51 Test wickets, spent two seasons with Northamptonshire and offers a point of difference with his two-metre frame, while top-order batsmen Ben Curran and Nick Welch, along with power-hitter Sikandar Raza, also have county experience.
Zimbabwe have languished in cricket's doldrums since the turn of the century, but used to punch above their weight in regular spars with the former colonial power.
Their rivalry peaked during a 1996-97 tour when then-England coach David Lloyd infamously declared "we flippin' murdered 'em" upon drawing a Test series, prematurely claiming moral victory before being clean-swept on the 50-over leg and conceding a hat-trick to chicken-farmer-turned-paceman Eddo Brandes.
The restoration of cricketing ties between England and Zimbabwe will be completed on Thursday when Trent Bridge hosts a standalone four-day Test between the nations.
For Ben Stokes's men the unique fixture provides a tune-up before India visit in June for a marquee five-Test series, while for Craig Ervine's tourists it could be the only chance in their careers to play an international on English soil.
The last red-ball encounter between the sides came in 2003, James Anderson's debut series, and they have not met in any format since 2007.
"(England) is the only team I haven't played against, so (this) would basically be my debut men's international game against them," 38-year-old Sean Williams, Zimbabwe's premier Test batsman with five hundreds and an average of 44, told Reuters after supplanting Anderson as world cricket's longest-tenured player.
"When we talk about a 20-year career, that is an incredible thing to think about."
Both cricket and diplomatic relations soured by the mid-2000s, when Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe embarked on an economy-crippling land redistribution program which displaced thousands of white farmers and left the African country isolated from the West.
Number-two ranked England will look to 'Bazball' exponents Harry Brook, Joe Root and Stokes to bat their opponents into submission and ease the burden on an inexperienced seam department in the abbreviated fixture.
Gus Atkinson, on 11 caps, will lead an injury-hit attack missing veterans Mark Wood and Chris Woakes as Essex mainstay Sam Cook, with 321 first-class wickets at 20 apiece, prepares for a debut.
"He's kept knocking the door down, fair play to him," said England selector Luke Wright.
For the 10th-ranked visitors to defy all odds and catch England off-guard in Nottingham, leadership will be sought from those with local knowledge.
Impressive strike bowler Blessing Muzarabani, averaging 22 for 51 Test wickets, spent two seasons with Northamptonshire and offers a point of difference with his two-metre frame, while top-order batsmen Ben Curran and Nick Welch, along with power-hitter Sikandar Raza, also have county experience.
Zimbabwe have languished in cricket's doldrums since the turn of the century, but used to punch above their weight in regular spars with the former colonial power.
Their rivalry peaked during a 1996-97 tour when then-England coach David Lloyd infamously declared "we flippin' murdered 'em" upon drawing a Test series, prematurely claiming moral victory before being clean-swept on the 50-over leg and conceding a hat-trick to chicken-farmer-turned-paceman Eddo Brandes.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Sydney Morning Herald
13 hours ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
Africa's most beautiful hotels are decorated with repurposed junk
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and when I enter Latitude 15 in Lusaka my eye beholds the most beautiful hotel in the world. Walls pop with contemporary African art and dreamy chandeliers adorn the ceilings. Materials are organic: leather, beads, wood, mud, feathers; this is a place that vibrates with earthy personality and juicy colour. On closer inspection, the chandeliers are not light fixtures at all - they're cascading copper discs and clay beads and fragments of pearlescent glass held together by delicate strands of wire. These luxe ornamentations come not from the European design houses of Baccarat or Murano, but from Likoma, a pinprick-sized island on Lake Malawi. So immense is the lake, it straddles three countries: Malawi, Tanzania and Mozambique; Likoma, though part of Malawi, lies just a few kilometres off the remote eastern lakeshore in Mozambique. Here at the social enterprise Katundu, in Likoma, the largely female workforce crafts resplendent artefacts and functional furnishings from life's detritus: wine bottles, hot water tanks, fishing boats, engine parts. 'Wine bottles we get from the [nearby] lodge, and junk we get from Lilongwe on the mainland,' says Lisa Njakale, Katundu's general manager.
The Age
13 hours ago
- The Age
Africa's most beautiful hotels are decorated with repurposed junk
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and when I enter Latitude 15 in Lusaka my eye beholds the most beautiful hotel in the world. Walls pop with contemporary African art and dreamy chandeliers adorn the ceilings. Materials are organic: leather, beads, wood, mud, feathers; this is a place that vibrates with earthy personality and juicy colour. On closer inspection, the chandeliers are not light fixtures at all - they're cascading copper discs and clay beads and fragments of pearlescent glass held together by delicate strands of wire. These luxe ornamentations come not from the European design houses of Baccarat or Murano, but from Likoma, a pinprick-sized island on Lake Malawi. So immense is the lake, it straddles three countries: Malawi, Tanzania and Mozambique; Likoma, though part of Malawi, lies just a few kilometres off the remote eastern lakeshore in Mozambique. Here at the social enterprise Katundu, in Likoma, the largely female workforce crafts resplendent artefacts and functional furnishings from life's detritus: wine bottles, hot water tanks, fishing boats, engine parts. 'Wine bottles we get from the [nearby] lodge, and junk we get from Lilongwe on the mainland,' says Lisa Njakale, Katundu's general manager.
The Advertiser
14 hours ago
- The Advertiser
Wild beaches or whale tales: Which dazzling WA beach town should you choose?
Lucky Bay near Esperance. By Mal Chenu and Amy Cooper Both Esperance and Albany sparkle with wild landscapes, dazzling beaches and a glorious sense of being far from the world's worries. Subscribe now for unlimited access. or signup to continue reading All articles from our website The digital version of Today's Paper All other in your area But if you're heading south from Perth, which way should you turn? Do you chase Esperance's blinding-white sands and island-studded seas, or stop sooner in Albany for history, whales and food worth travelling for? Our duelling experts go head-to-head to help you decide which WA wonder deserves your next road trip. Welcome to two WAs to go, starring a pair of standouts on our biggest state's south coast - a stretch so famously spectacular that nobody's going home disappointed. Driving south from Perth, you could stop at Albany - about 4.5 hours away - for some admittedly lovely heritage. Or you could follow the majestic coastline for another 500 kilometres, watching the wild beauty around you amplify and expand into a universe of blue so breathtaking it's narcotic. Cape Le Grand National Park near Esperance. Picture supplied by Tourism Western Australia I defy anyone who thinks humans or AI could ever out-design nature to traverse the 40-kilometre Great Ocean Drive loop around the little port town of Esperance and not change their mind. Standing atop Rotary Lookout or Frenchman Peak, with the Southern Ocean all around, the Recherche Archipelago's 110 islands scattered across it like spilled gems, you're amid splendour on a scale so grand that all problems - the world's and your own - seem to shrink to the size of a plankton. This scenery exhausts superlatives. Perhaps that's why Esperance's beaches have such basic English names: West Beach, Nine Mile Beach, Fourth Beach ... European settlers just didn't have words for what they saw. Lucky Bay at least tells you how you'll feel when you're on its five-kilometre, sparkling swathe kissed by turquoise blue. It's officially Australia's whitest beach, an award bestowed not by marketers but scientists from the National Committee on Soil and Terrain (who certainly are smart, because they gave themselves the job of visiting all the country's lushest holiday spots, collecting sand samples). Lucky Bay is also one of the few places you can see kangaroos sunbathing on a beach without needing to worry about what was in your cocktail. Charmingly surreal, a Lucky 'roo with a view is a must for your bucket and spade list. Blue Haven beach is exactly what it promises - a sheltered little slice of azure paradise. Families love Twilight Bay for its perfect swimming conditions, and whoever named an idyllic vision of crystal waters and snowy sands Hellfire Beach frankly had some weird ideas about what constitutes punishment. It's stunning everywhere you look; through the inland rolling heathland of Cape Le Grand National Park, to the rainbow-hued saltwater lakes including rosy-pink Lake Hillier on Middle Island, offshore from Esperance. Right now, the bushland is about to burst into bloom with wildflowers. Take to the walking trails and you'll find yourself wandering among carpets of blazing blossoms, a technicolour fanfare to spring. Esperance has manmade attractions, too: Australia's only fish skin tannery, where you can buy a barramundi handbag, and the world's only full-scale replica of Stonehenge. Impressive though that is, you could build a full-size Taj Mahal here, too, and the natural landscape would still steal the show. Compared to the extravaganza of Esperance, Albany's an also-ran alternative. When I was a schoolboy in Perth in the mid-70s, my class went to Albany on a school camp. This was traumatic for two reasons: my disastrous first snog (sorry, Lee, wherever you are) and because we 12-year-olds actually saw whales hauled out of the water and butchered. The National Anzac Centre, Albany. Picture supplied by Tourism Western Australia Today, whale watching has replaced whale slaughter, and from June to October, you can see them frolicking in the bays and the surrounding ocean, on a path known as "Humpback Highway". Australia's last whaling station was decommissioned in 1978 and is now Albany's Historic Whaling Station. (It was briefly known as Whale World until the Griswold family turned up and were as disappointed as young Lee.) A Heritage-listed site and the 2024 WA Tourist Attraction Gold Award-winner, the Whaling Station showcases artefacts and memorabilia, a spectacular shell display, the only preserved chaser ship in the world, a blue whale skeleton and intricate scrimshaw art. Albany and its surrounds are a natural feast, even if it no longer includes cetacean sashimi. Mother Nature shows off her architectural flair at Torndirrup National Park with the Natural Bridge rock formation and The Gap, a spectacular channel carved into the 40-metre-high coastal granite. The Southern Ocean angrily throws itself against the rocks here, and you can catch the salty spray from an overhanging lookout. In Spring, the region's palette of wildflowers bursts forth. Overlooking King George Sound, the National Anzac Centre tells of the 40,000 Aussies and Kiwis who departed from Albany to fight in World War I. HMAS Perth II was scuttled off Seal Island in the Sound, and is now a burgeoning coral reef and dive site. Albany is also renowned for its fabulous restaurants, with regional produce faithfully prepared at top-end diners such as Monty's Leap, Rock Salt, Liberte (Gourmet Traveller's 2024 Bar of the Year) and Kirby's Atelier de Cuisine, which does a degustation of local goodies paired with Alkoomi wines. Every Saturday, the Albany Farmers Market offers everything but an apostrophe. The dining is good in Esperance, too, if you're a shark and like your protein served with a neoprene glaze. Albany is a great place to visit in any weather, as the Pie and Pint counter lunch in front of the fire at the Earl of Spencer Historic Inn proves. Esperance, on the other hand, only shows off its turquoise water and photoshopped sand when the sun is out and there is no breeze. On most days, the Esperance wind will exfoliate you as you enjoy the view. It takes five hours to drive from Perth to Albany, and three more to get to Esperance. That's a lot more travel just to get a photo of unionised kangaroos lazing on the beach.
