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.