When the youngest captain in Test history stood up to Robert Mugabe’s enforcers he and his family had to flee the country after a kidnap attempt and death threats
Eighteen months after Tatenda Taibu had become the youngest captain in the history of Test cricket, having been chosen to lead Zimbabwe at the age of 20 in April 2004, his life was under threat. In a sinister warning he was forced to look at images of death in Harare. That distressing experience led to his temporary exile as he went on the run from Robert Mugabe’s enforcers.
All these years later, on a sleepy morning in the Liverpool suburb of Crosby, where he and his family now live, it is quiet inside Taibu’s front room. We have reached the point in his story where he had been summoned to the office of a minister in Mugabe’s government in October 2005. Taibu had just announced his retirement from international cricket in protest against his players not being paid or treated fairly.
Written by Donald McRae
This news first appeared on https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/jun/21/tatenda-taibu-zimbabwe-cricket-interview under the title “Tatenda Taibu: ‘I should have been Zimbabwe’s poster boy but I was on the run’”. Bolchha Nepal is not responsible or affiliated towards the opinion expressed in this news article.
