Arrest warrant issued against Taibu

Posted by brmtaylor.com admin on February 07, 2009

It was once again the Canadian Press that broke a Zimbabwe cricket story. This time it was regarding Tatenda Taibu, who has an arrest warrant issued against him after failing to appear in court for assault charges on Friday.

Taibu allegedly assaulted Esther Lupepe, the Zimbabwe Cricket finance manager, in October 2008 regarding payment owed to him after ZC promised to pay for Taibu's family travel expenses to Pakistan as the team toured.

Jonathan Samkange, Taibu's defense lawyer, said that Taibu's non-appearance was the result of poor communication between the two. Apparantly Taibu called Samkange from Kenya to say that he wouldn't be returning to Zimbabwe at the conclusion of the tour as he wanted to play club cricket in Bangladesh.

Taibu ended up returning to Zimbabwe with the rest of the squad, thinking that the trial had been postponed.

Taibu wasn't selected for any of the matches played in Kenya. Forster Mutizwa was his replacement and scored 124 runs at 41.33 in 5 matches. Taibu was experiencing a poor run of form, scoring only 55 runs at 11.00 in the 5 matches he had played on the tour of Bangladesh.

It remains to be seen whether Taibu is seen as part of Zimbabwe's future plans, particularly after he has made clear his desire to expose corruption inside Zimbabwe Cricket. Given Mutizwa's good form and aggressive lower order hitting and the fact that wicket keeper Regis Chakabva is fighting for a place in the team, Taibu might not have picked the best time to go out all guns blazing.