A fuzzy future, and no better days to look back to, Zimbabwe has no option but to enjoy the 'now' ©Getty
One word. Eight letters. Landlocked but bordered by mighty rivers north and south, one of them adorned by the world's most arresting waterfall. A past of trouble and strife. A present of "no news is good news". A future not yet certain. A place of, above all, resilience. Zimbabwe is all of this, and more.
It is, for instance, where 10 teams have gathered to tussle over which two of them will go to the men's World Cup in India in October. Those sides will be West Indies and Sri Lanka, convention will chorus. Things may be that simple, but it is to be hoped they are not.
They weren't in 2018, when Afghanistan not only qualified for the World Cup but thumped the Windies in the final. Zimbabwe, also then the hosts, were shut out of a World Cup for the first time after they made their tournament debut in 1983. The home side and Scotland, in particular, suffered seriously from poor umpiring decisions.
"The scars of 2018 are always going to be there, whether we qualify here and supposedly put it to bed or not," Zimbabwe captain Craig Ervine said on Saturday. "That's probably something that even when I'm 80 years old, I'm still going to be thinking back to; that moment against the UAE."
The United Arab Emirates all but sealed the Zimbabweans' fate by winning a rain-affected Super Six game by five runs.
The 2018 qualifiers reflected the changing shape of cricket in that, for the first time, current Test-playing teams were involved: Zimbabwe, West Indies, Afghanistan and Ireland. Three of them are back this time but the Afghans, a rising force in the world game, have made it through the front door of direct qualification.
The next new kids on the big block could be Nepal, who have won 13 of their 14 internationals this year, all of them ODIs. They will expect much from legspinner Sandeep Lamichhane, their all-time leading wicket-taker with 189 strikes in 86 games in the two formats. "When he's in the team, whenever we need a wicket he delivers," Nepal captain Rohit Paudel said on Saturday. "When he's not there, we struggle to get wickets."
Lamichhane's cricketing prowess has made him a star far beyond the boundary. However, he is in Zimbabwe controversially having been allowed by the Nepal Supreme Court to leave his country despite being
