The irony was unavoidable for Zimbabwe fans on Thursday as Colin de Grandhomme took two catches and effected a run-out in New Zealand's 202-run victory in Napier. It wasn't just that he was dismantling the nation of his birth; the place where he grew up and learnt his cricket, and the country for whom both his father and grandfather had played. It was also the fact that he was taking his catches, and doing so with a skill and calmness rarely displayed by Zimbabwe in the field.

There are still many things ailing Zimbabwe cricket - that's been obvious on a tour in which they've failed to challenge the Black Caps in any way. But most disheartening has been the fielding, not only because Zimbabwe had a reputation for it pre-2005 but also because there's no excuse for not doing it well.

No cricketer coming through St George's College in Harare, where De Grandhomme went to high school, would have passed through the first form without an education on Colin Bland from the Under-14 coach Mike Nash.

Nash was an undoubted cricket tragic, and although I remember the tedium of his interminable lectures, his passion clearly came through because I also remember his description of Bland's technique - how it was refined to the extent that he would always have his right foot halfway to the ground at the moment the ball was struck by the batsman, ready to propel him in the appropriate direction.

Such stories made it clear just how much Bland relished fielding, which is not something you sense in the Zimbabwe of today. Although Bland played Test cricket for South Africa he was born in Bulawayo and represented Rhodesia in the Currie Cup, making him one of Zimbabwe's great cricket treasures.

Sadly Nash passed away a few years ago, because his history lessons could be an asset for Zimbabwe right now. The six-year black hole that preceded their return to Test cricket has to some extent drained the memories of what the country has achieved, taking national pride along with it. Even the 1990s feel like a distant, disconnected reminiscence, and what's needed is for someone to tie the previous eras to the current one as a reminder of what Zimbabwe's cricketers represent.

A couple of plucky performances against New Zealand last year suggested that Zimbabwe were beginning to realise this, and as Peter Roebuck put it, were transforming from boys to men. But the belief has bled out of them on this tour as every chance has been spilled, the confidence built up over six months of hard work draining from the psyche to be replaced by self-doubt.

Improving their fielding is the best way to restore self-respect, but it will also have the important effect of buying them time and goodwill in the eyes of the rest of the cricketing world - some of whom are already questioning Zimbabwe's Test status after last month's humiliation by the Black Caps.

I was reminded of this when I was alerted to a piece by South African Nobel Prize winner JM Coetzee in a new book by Christian Ryan entitled Australia: Story of a Cricket Country. In the chapter, Coetzee recalls listening to South Africa's tour of Australia in 1952 over the radio as a 12-year-old boy.

At that time the Springboks were fairly rubbish, but their captain Jack Cheetham and manager Ken Viljoen decided they could make up for some of their shortcomings by giving "top priority to fielding, using this hitherto underexploited department of the game as part of the attack."

It was, Coetzee says, "something of a landmark in the history of the game, at least for forms of the game played under a critical public eye. Not only would good-hearted public tolerance of incompetent fielding henceforth begin to evaporate, but it had been convincingly demonstrated that a middling group of players could be moulded into a winning team around a core of excellence in fielding, the department of the game in which the quality of the ensemble - as opposed to the qualities of individual players - comes out most clearly."

South Africa went on to share the series 2-2.

Fielding well is no novel concept these days, but there is still plenty that Zimbabwe can take from those sentiments.

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