Luke Jongwe

There is always a certain excitement whenever a young batsman with a lot of promise emerges into the scene. Such is the case with Luke Mafuwa Jongwe. Having made a name in junior teams more as a batsman than a bowler, Jongwe is yet to come to the party with the bat in national colours. His story sounds like a page ripped from a fairy-tale book. First of all, a stranger discovered his talent when he was playing street cricket in the dusty streets of Glen View in Harare, then his parents emphatically opposed the idea of their son playing cricket instead of concentrating on school work.

But such was the young man’s belief in his own ability that he wrote on his bedroom wall at 16 that he would play for the national team before he was 20 and the dream came to fruition. While cricket became the centre of his life as a young lad, big things began to unlock for him when he went for secondary school at Churchill High School. First, he made the Zimbabwe Under-14 team to tour Namibia and at the tender age of 16, he made it to the Zimbabwe Under-19 World Cup team.

In 2016, he suffered a head injury in a practice match in the UAE weeks before the WT20 in India and was subsequently ruled out of the mega tournament. The young Zimbabwean all-rounder was primed to lead the bowling attack and hoisting the country’s flag was exactly what his childhood dreams were; As they say, destiny has two ways of crushing us - by refusing our wishes and by fulfilling them. Agonizingly for the rising cricketer, destiny took the former path. There were also fears that his cricket career could have reached a dead end but he fought against all odds by recovering in time and made himself available for selection for Zimbabwe's home series against India later that year. However, he was ignored by the national selectors. He is working hard to get to his best again.

Jongwe was in cricketing oblivion for a long time, and it felt like he retire a forgotten cricketer. However, he was called back to the team in 2021 for the home series against Pakistan, a full five years after his previous International game. Since then Jongwe has been in and out of the team, unable to mark down his spot due to plenty of competition in the seam bowling department. He is an able swing bowler and can be handy as a lower order batter as well, but is yet to really live up to that promise in International cricket.

Jongwe considers Elton Chigumbura as his role model and is eager to participate in the Indian Premier League someday.