African Sports Monthly Mar, 2015 | Page 80

was termed ‘loss of form’ and picked Charles Coventry instead. The two figureheads’records are almost similar. As a teenager, young Alistair Campbell broke into the senior national team as a fresh faced 19-year-old in 1992, making his debut Test in a sparkling 63 against Pakistan, prompting Wisden cricket to portray him as a sort of David Gower — that mellifluous English batsman of the early ‘80s. Campbell would remain fresh faced through the course of his career and played largely so till the end. But Campbell’s promising career nosedived quickly from meteoric to metronomic as time and again he failed to fulfill his potential as a promising batsman. He continually floundered at four to expose the Zimbabwe middle order, which was shored up by Andy Flower. In well over his first 40 Test matches he was yet to record a century despite batting no lower than six, and averaged a measly 27. Finally, he broke that duck in 2000, making 103 against India and went on to make one more against West Indies. And yet in his 11 years as a one-day and Test cricketer, he played in four World Cups. In comparison, Hamilton Masakadza will be playing in his first, and possibly last, World Cup in 13 years of international cricket. Now almost 32 and at an age in which batsmen reach their peak, he will be 35 when the next World Cup arrives. In July 2001, the young Masakadza then a 17-year-old school boy made a century on Test debut, against the West Indies. He was quickly shipped to the One Day squad against the advice of Dave Houghton, played in the notoriously slow but tricky pitches of the subcontinent in Sri Lanka, failed on that tour and for the next four years was on study sabbatical in South Africa. But when he came back, he was immense. Once derided for not being a One Day type of player he defied all predictions and today has become the most feared T20 batsmen on the domestic scene.