📚 Book: Keeper Of Faith | ✍️ Author: Tatenda Taibu | Episode 5

Book Café Podcast

▶️ Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/nLLI_rI4bVQ
📚Book: "Keeper Of Faith: Cricket, Conflict, and God in Zimbabwe's age of extremes"
📚Genre: Autobiography / Sports / Cricket
✍️ Author: Tatenda Taibu
🎧 Episode info:
🏏 Aged just 20 in April 2004, Tatenda Taibu became the youngest captain in the history of Test circket, and the first black player to captain Zimbabwe 🇿🇼in the sport.
🏏 Just over a year later he was exiled in Bangladesh 🇧🇩, on the run from a cricket board who tried to threaten him into silence.
🏏 "Keeper Of Faith" is his autobiography 📚; a forthright, unblinking and ultimately uplifting account of cricket 🏏, conflict ⚔️, and God ✝️ in the chaos and violence of Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe.
🖍 Episode highlights:
✔️ Early life: Zimbabwe as the breadbasket of Africa
✔️ Bangladesh's love for football ⚽️
✔️ Zimbabwe's dominance at age level cricket
✔️ "Death of Democracy" black armband protest
✔️ Wicketkeepers: Andy Flower, Mushfiqur Rahim, Alec Stewart, Kumar Sangakkara
✔️ Unbroken partnership: Tatenda & Loveness
✔️ Favorite Books
✔️ Current Reads
▶️ Tatenda Taibu's Official YouTube Channel: @taibu44trust
▶️ Henry Olonga's Official YouTube Channel: @HenryOlongaOFFICIAL
📚 Book Review by @omarrasman :
Cricket. Politics. And religion.
These are the three ingredients that make up the memoirs of former Zimbabwean cricketer Tatenda Taibu.
While most sporting memoirs generally tend to focus on personal triumphs, Taibu's autobiography offers a refreshing change where "failures" and "disillusionments" take center stage.
Failure because Taibu's successes on the cricket field are few and far between as he constantly finds himself fighting a war on three fronts: one against a corrupt Zimbabwean Cricket Board, another against a ruthless and intimidating Mugabe government, and a third against a seemingly mutinous band of players who never appear to miss an opportunity to forsake him at every turn.
Yet despite this grim backdrop, Taibu's story is also one about love and self-actualization.
His relationship with wife & soulmate Loveness is one of the bright spots of the book. In the darkest of hours it is her strength that he leans on. And it is her unwavering faith in God that helps Taibu to gradually find his own "Road to Damascus" moment. Hence, she can very rightly be considered as the secondary main character in the book; the Mary Magdalene to Taibu's itinerant Jesus.
Another aspect of the book that I personally loved was Taibu consistently referring to Bangladesh as his "second home"; and how it was a Bangladeshi friend that helped grant him refuge when he was on the run from Robert Mugabe's henchmen. No doubt this will be of great interest to all Bangladeshi cricket fans to see what a huge part Bangladesh has played in Taibu's life story.
At just 36 years of age (at the time of publication), Taibu has already lived and experienced a full life that most people who live even twice his age do not get to experience.
Hence, the real question to be asked after reading the book is: of all the standards by which one judges a life, could there ever be a better life story than that of the Little Master from Zimbabwe?
My rating: 5/5 Stars 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟(with great distinction)
#book #bookstagram #books #reading #bookworm #booklover #read #instabook #bookish #bibliophile #tatendataibu #zimbabwe #cricket #robertmugabe #rhodesian #africa #african #southafrica #hashimam

Support the show

فصول

1. Introduction & Early Life (00:00:00)

2. The book title (00:03:30)

3. Zimbabwe as the breadbasket of Africa (00:05:38)

4. Bangladesh's love for football (00:11:10)

5. Zimbabwe's dominance at age level cricket (00:17:00)

6. Captaincy: the youngest Test captain in cricketing history (00:24:45)

7. "Death of Democracy" black armband protest (00:35:00)

8. Wicketkeepers: Andy Flower, Mushfiqur Rahim, Alec Stewart, Kumar Sangakkara (00:41:10)

9. Unbroken partnership: Tatenda & Loveness (00:47:14)

10. Favorite Books (00:51:35)

11. Current Reads (00:55:33)

12. Coaching & exhibition matches (00:58:45)