Tangier Gazette
December 12, 2003
Abderrahim Zniber may be regarded as the father figure of Moroccan cricket and, as such, an important character in the history of the country as a whole. He captained Morocco in their first international cricket match in 2001 in an ODI against Japan, mere months after Morocco were admitted into the World Cricket Conference. And since then, he has been at the forefront of every significant event in Moroccan history, until his retirement from the sport altogether last night. Considered by many as the country's first professional cricketer, Zniber was playing top-rung cricket against European clubs way before the World Cricket Conference even existed. Zniber first broke ground in the country of his birth, playing for Ajax Amsterdam in the 1989 Hoofdklasse season as Abder Rahim. After the season he added the family name Zniber, moved to England and went to Oxford to read PPE and enhance his reputation as an idiosyncratic and fearless cricketer: a right-handed batsman, whose response to any bowler or situation was to dance down the track first ball and slam it back over the bowler's head, and a right-arm medium-paced bowler, economical on a good pitch, devastatingly effective on a bad one. Zniber had a couple of productive seasons with Ajax Amsterdam, where his successes included marrying the club chairman's daughter, then returned to Morocco to take on the captaincy of Casablanca CC, which would later go on to become Raja Casablanca, one of the world's top clubs.
He had learned well under Dutch legends Edgar Kreek and Ronny van den Brom and as such, led Casablanca CC to make them the best cricket club in Morocco, well before the formation of the World Cricket Conference, and even well after it came into being. Once the World Cricket Conference formed, and a couple of years later, Morocco were admitted as a full-member nation, Zniber had reached 30, and with a prolonged history of untreated injuries, he was merely a shell of his former self. Despite his personal woes and the lateness of circumstances opening gateways to cricket's globalization, Zniber took Casablanca CC, now called Raja Casablanca, to even greater heights. Raja Casablanca won back-to-back seasons of the Moroccan Cup in 1999 and 2000, and in both seasons Zniber top-scored as the best batsman of the tournament. As an instrumental figure in Casablanca's early success, Zniber was handed the reigns of the national side once they become a full-member nation of the Conference, and so on debut, Zniber at once made Morocco worthy of respect rather than anyone's sympathy. In 49 internationals as captain, Zniber has led his team to victory over 24 countries. Despite the emergence of a batting wunderkind of sorts in Hervé Hocquard, a version of Zniber merely resembling that springly youngster who first broke onto the season was able to hold his own and be Morocco's stonewall through thick and thin, in fact mostly thin. Having played ten games more than Hervé Hocquard, Zniber retires as the second-most prolific Moroccan batsmen in one-day history, as well as their third-highest scorer in their debut Cricket World Cup.
In 2002, Zniber returned to England to play in their newly-minted Friends Provident Trophy, where he represented West Midlands. Zniber led Morocco in every major event that has been held since Morocco's admission into the WCC, and the African confederation of AFCON, until his retirement. Zniber even captained Casablanca in two iterations of the Club World Cup, including the inaugural season where they finished as runners-up. In all his positions of authority, he was inclined to be dictatorial and quickly angered, especially by any hint of criticism. In some ways, his prickly brilliance has become characteristic of his country's cricket. But he was also a visionary. He ruthlessly modernised the organisation of the Moroccan game, and many of the themes he was advocating in the early 1990s have become common currency among modern administrators: the need to do away with unwieldy committees, to break the post-imperial dominance of Lord's, and to expand the game in Africa. He was an early advocate of neutral umpires. Little of this was well received by his colleagues in Amsterdam at the time. Upon his retirement, incumbent WCC President Müller Schwanstegger has stated: After Zniber's retirement, Moroccan cricket has lost an integral part of its being, which will need a very long time to find the replacement of.