It has become a refrain in Zimbabwe cricket circles that the national side needs to play more cricket in order to improve. After their defeat to West Indies on Tuesday, coach Heath Streak reiterated Zimbabwe's need for elite cricket: the Bulawayo Test was just their second Test of the year.
"It is difficult," Streak said. "Unfortunately for us, we had planned to have Pakistan A for two four-day games [before this series]. They would have been very strong opposition, but that didn't materialise and it set us back a little bit. We had our own Logan Cup games but the level of that is not quite the same. I've said for a while that I think Zimbabwe play well when we play consistently and regularly at elite level. Hopefully in the future we will have fewer long gaps in between series and guys can play regularly at that high level."
Zimbabwe have played just 14 full international games this year, and seven of those were against Afghanistan and Scotland. Compare that to, for example, their neighbours South Africa who have played 37 internationals so far in 2017, going on multi-format tours of New Zealand and England, and hosting Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.