NATIONAL cricket team captain Heath Streak as a well as convenor of selectors Tatenda Taibu are heading to the International Cricket Council headquarters in Dubai, United Arab Emirates on Saturday for a gathering where they will seek more game time for Zimbabwe going forward.

Streak and Taibu are accompanied by Zimbabwe Cricket chief executive officer Wilfred Mukondiwa. They will meet with ICC general manager for cricket, Geoff Allardice as well as the international cricket governing body’s finance manager, Faisal Hasnain.

Allardice was in the country last week for a one day gathering where he met with ZC chairman, Tavengwa Mukuhlani, Streak and Taibu. Hasnain was in Zimbabwe for almost a week meeting with the ZC secretariat as part of his work in helping the local body in managing its finances. 

Streak said the scheduled gathering which will be attended by all the other ICC Full Members is meant to afford Zimbabwe an opportunity to negotiate for more fixtures as from 2019 to 2023. The current Future Tours Programme which was adopted in 2014 and ends in 2019 is not favourable to smaller countries such as Zimbabwe, Bangladesh, Afghanistan as well as Ireland since the respective boards negotiate their own bilateral series. This has seen the bigger countries play against each other before they engage the smaller teams.

“We are going to a scheduled ICC meeting to negotiate future series from 2019 to 2023, the meetings are taking place on Monday and Tuesday,’’ said Streak.

After their embarrassing 3-2 series loss to Afghanistan which saw Zimbabwe being bowled out for 54 in the fifth and final One Day International at Harare Sports Club last month, Streak as well as skipper Graeme Cremer cried for more game time in order to improve their play as they believe that the lack of fixtures is hurting the team.

@Mdawini_29