Mugabe Worm Gnaws the Life From Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe's cricketers will insist for a lifetime that they are not representatives of Robert Mugabe's tyrannical regime but they can no longer feign that they are immune to its consequences.

Richard Johnson deserves recognition for a startling bowling debut - the fourth best in English Test history - but it came against a country whose cricketing stock is falling as fast as the Zimbabwe dollar. This is a side that is fast becoming unworthy of Test status.

Zimbabwe's players might try to close the dressing room door on the injustices of their nation, some of which have brought fear and horror to their own friends and families. They might strive to maintain a unity, black and white alike, in the most trying times, hoping that one day soon they will awake to discover the Mugabe nightmare is over and begin a painful rebuilding process.

But the Mugabe worm is among them, too, weakening them at every turn. A Zimbabwe side once respected for efficiency and bloody-mindedness has succumbed to naivety and hopelessness. Geoff Marsh, their Australian coach, bemoaned: "Our boys are just not used to this standard."

Johnson, a dependable professional deserving of his chance, was the benefactor of their confusion. A Durham crowd initially hoping that the local boy, Steve Harmison, would be given the new ball, met the announcement of Johnson's name in silence. Midway through his first over, after Mark Vermeulen and Stuart Carlisle had fallen in successive balls, they were roaring him on to a possible hat-trick. A hint of outswing, and a nibble the other way off the seam, and this Test cricket lark seemed a doddle.

"I tried to swing the ball away but it just wasn't happening, so Nasser told me to bowl straight. It was probably not a 94-all-out wicket but you get silly days like this in cricket."

Zimbabwe's situation is not as much silly as desperate. Over the past five years an entire side has departed, and the cricketing stock from which once they might have been replaced has shrunk to subsistence levels. The consequences of Zimbabwe's political madness are irresistible.

Andy Flower and Henry Olonga, black-armband protesters in the World Cup, entered retirement in a blaze of publicity but there have been countless others.

Murray Goodwin and Neil Johnson left three years ago, encouraged by their wives, to seek a better lifestyle in Australia and South Africa respectively. Scott Brant, a young left-arm fast bowler, chose Queensland and Essex after his family moved to Australia. Ryan Watson is making his name as a batsman for Scottish Saltires.

They have lost eight successive Tests and only rain is likely to prevent a ninth today. Bangladesh have lost a record 11 in a row, with Cairns and Darwin to come, but Bangladesh, stricken by floods and occasionally famine, still possesses one essential ingredient: hope.

Three England bowlers have bettered Johnson's display by taking seven first-innings wickets on debut. The Surrey pair of Alec Bedser and Jim Laker achieved it just after the war but the best return came from John Lever, Essex's smooth left-arm swing bowler, who took seven for 46 against India in Delhi on the 1976-77 tour.

Johnson might reflect on the oddity that the greatest Test debuts have been followed largely by disappointment. Bob Massie, a burly Australian, swung the ball prodigiously both ways at Lord's when he took 16 wickets against England in 1972. He played only five more Tests and never again took five wickets in his career.

When Narendra Hirwani, a bespectacled Indian leg-spinner, took eight in each innings against West Indies at Madras 16 years later, his world-record 16 for 136 led India to imagine him the great wrist spinner that Shane Warne was later to become. But his career lasted only 17 Tests.

Johnson also reaped the benefit of five of the seven lbw decisions, a record for a Test innings. Dickie Bird was once partly responsible for the world record of 17 lbws in a match, in Trinidad in 1993, the same Dickie Bird who spent half-an-hour trapped in a lift at the Riverside on Thursday.

"It's stairs for me from now on," vowed Bird yesterday. Johnson, though, for the next few days at least, will be walking on air.