The career of Zimbabwe's fastest bowler, Henry Olonga, may be at the crossroads. After suffering a recurring injury, which has only recently been diagnosed as a stress fracture, he is pensive about the game and his future in it, although he does intend to play again.

The trouble dates back to the West Indian tour last April, when he hurt his shoulder, after a season for much of which he had to be the lone spearhead of the Zimbabwean attack with Heath Streak injured. He missed the last two matches of the one-day series in West Indies, and had a complete break for two weeks until the team arrived in England. "I probably wasn't as fit as I thought I was," he admits. "What then happened was that I injured my left leg in the match against Essex and got what is called a stress fracture. At the time it wasn't diagnosed correctly. I can't remember exactly when I first felt the pain, but it certainly got worse and worse after I got off the field. Amato [the team physio] iced it but the next day I actually found it very difficult to walk. We had a practice a day or so after the Essex game and I remember telling Andy Pycroft [coach on the England tour] and Carl Rackemann that I couldn't land on my leg. I couldn't put any pressure on it.

"After that it was so painful I couldn't actually walk; I had to have a crutch. I got a lot of attention because there were a few people on the tour who felt I wasn't really injured. It was very distressing for me. I came back to Zimbabwe for three weeks to try and recover, went back and broke down again."

This injury put him out of the entire international programme in England, the two Tests and the one-day triangular tournament that also included West Indies. He returned home again and tried to recover in the month before the following domestic season began. "It obviously wasn't enough. I came back to play in the Test against New Zealand in Harare and subsequently injured my thighs, because I basically wasn't strong enough."

The leg injury recurred in New Zealand, and he returned to Zimbabwe while the rest of the team flew on to Australia. It was only confirmed just before this interview that the original problem had been a stress fracture, vindicating Henry against the skeptics who have been quick to label him a hypochondriac. Extensive tests had been done in England, but none of them had revealed the cause of the problem. Apparently, according to Henry, it takes a while for a stress fracture to show up on an X-ray because it is only when the body starts to heal itself and to deposit excess bone beside the injury that it becomes apparent.

"I had played with it all the time," says Henry. "There were times when I played on and just ignored it, but I suppose things came to a head in New Zealand." Then came the diagnosis back in Harare. "We had thought it was a torn tendon," says Henry. "It was very difficult to tell whether it was soft tissue or tendon or muscle or ligaments or a bone, and it was only when I had the X-ray that the radiologist confirmed that it was a stress fracture."

So Henry was still not fully fit when he arrived in India with the Zimbabwean team. His thigh injury, incurred against New Zealand, recurred in the ICC Knockout Tournament and India is the last place a pace bowler wants to arrive in when not fully fit. "I was under no illusions; playing in India is a tough task for anybody," he says. "The wickets are not the fastest or bounciest and don't give that much assistance to the bowlers. I went there knowing it was going to be hard work.

"It was a good tour to be on, although the cricket was very tough, especially for the bowlers and especially for me. So I struggled a bit. I was working on a lot of things with Carl Rackemann, the coach, technical issues, trying to get straighter lines through my feet, working on getting a pure and good technique, and as a result of that found the going tough. The reason I was working on my action was so as to prevent myself from being as injury-prone as I am. It was a hard tour – I think I was very expensive in most instances."

The television commentators during that series had noted that Henry had changed his action so as to avoid running down the danger area on the pitch, and as a result had lost his leap and a great deal of his pace. Was that correct?

"That may be true," Henry agrees, "but if you've just had a stress fracture on your lower leg, you don't want to jump too high and keep landing on it too hard. My knees are also getting a bit worn out, and jumping as high as I do is hard going on them. That's true; I've probably become a lot slower than I have been in the past. I'm just getting old, I guess [Henry is 24!]; my body is not allowing me to do the things I'd like it to do. But when I used to jump I used to land on the area, and even now without the jump I can be prone to going on the area if I'm not mindful of it. If I relax I will start running in the danger area because it's not just to do with the leap; it's to do with the line that I bowl. If I run up straight and bowl straight I won't get into the area, but the problems start to happen when I run in at an angle and don't get my body in a good position. Those are things I had to work on, and I'm still working on them, even though I'm not playing at the moment, and won't for the next two months. But those are issues I have to look at, and I don't know where the happy medium is. Maybe I have to jump a little less or a little more – but either way, I've got to find the happy medium and not render myself ineffective like I did in India.

"I think I'm getting to the place where the general skeleton of my action is good. Working with Carl Rackemann, there have been a few things that have come out that are good. I definitely need to get my line straighter, and if I can get it without getting too many stress fractures on my legs that will be great, but I don't know whether it puts more stress on my legs or less. But I like to think that after I've had a good rest we'll be able to pinpoint why I struggle with certain things. Carl Rackemann is a top coach and hopefully in time we can iron out a few of the problems I have and move on from there. I think he has a lot of confidence in me and hopefully that will help me become a better bowler."

Henry thinks he will continue to try to bowl without the leap, due mainly to the strain that leap exerts on his knees. But at the moment he is not bowling at all but concentrating on building his fitness. "If I cut my leap out I will have to get stronger in my shoulders to keep up a good pace," he realizes. "Only the good Lord can give me a new pair of knees and obviously if he wants me to play for another eight years I'll play for another eight years. If I get to the point where I can't play any more because my body is letting me down then I'll have to believe that's it, that's my time up."

India was not all doom and gloom for Henry, though. He mentions the outstanding cricketing performances of Andy and Grant Flower, Alistair Campbell's first Test hundred, and Dirk Viljoen's progress in Test cricket. "In the one-day games we had Trevor Madondo getting a really good, classy 70, and obviously Travis Friend is coming through – a pity he's injured at the moment. Realistically it's very disappointing to beat India in India, and we honestly played some really good cricket. Andrew Flower was a true champion on that tour and he proved that he's a really class batsman. We've all known that for years, but this tour was the tour on which he cemented that."

Any memorable moments for Henry himself? "I remember Sachin [Tendulkar] getting dropped off my bowling; I remember when we went to the Taj Mahal. It was a great experience to go there. Some of us went by train in the morning, and even that was a tremendous experience. All the people line up by the railway tracks in the morning and do their ablutions there; it was a bit of a culture shock. It was interesting seeing the number of people in India, their fanaticism, and even when I was bowling badly and was hit for a lot of runs they still supported me. Zaheer Khan hit me for four sixes in one over; that was memorable! But there was very little that was positive for me on that tour."

Although he prefers not to talk about it, Henry actually felt disappointed with the lack of encouragement and support for him within his own team while he was struggling on that tour. As has been mentioned before, he is regarded as a hypochondriac in some quarters, and no doubt his teammates were bitterly disappointed that their fastest bowler was out of action, while nobody realized then that the problem was a stress fracture. But Henry does speak with gratitude of Carl Rackemann, who continued to believe in him, and also mentions how Malcolm Jarvis, Guy Whittall and Brian Murphy had tried to encourage him at times.

Henry travelled to New Zealand with the team, unaware that officially he had been dropped by the selectors from the touring party until informed of it in a New Zealand newspaper, and that Gus Mackay was replacing him. Rackemann, manager `Babu' Meman and captain Heath Streak later discussed it with him at the nets, but they wanted to keep him as they felt that he was an integral part of the team. In the end the agreement was made that Henry would stay on as cover for Travis Friend, who had a nagging injury.

"But by then I was a man with a broken spirit," Henry confesses, "because I had bowled badly and I knew it, but I had also just been written off by certain people. I don't think I'm the first person ever to hit a patch of bad form, but I certainly felt I was the only person who wasn't allowed to play through it."

Henry did actually play in the one-off Test match after a most encouraging performance in a warm-up game. "I took three wickets and it was really good to play in that game," he says. "I took the new ball in that game and it allowed me to take wickets. I bowled well and I've never bowled as economically as that in my life – and they were competent batsmen. However in the Test match it was slightly different because I didn't get the new ball. I'd obviously been relegated to a first-change bowler and I had a mediocre Test. There were a couple of good chances I had that could have gone my way, a couple of decisions that didn't go my way. As a result of that I lost their confidence."

Injured as well, Henry returned home to Zimbabwe alone while the rest of the team progressed to the triangular tournament in Australia. "My whole perspective on life has changed now," Henry says. "I have realized that I am mortal – as if I never knew! – and that my cricket career will not last for ever, and with my increasing lack of favour with the selectors I might as well get on with my life and do all the other things I find interesting. I'm lining up a concert that I'd like to do in aid of a charity I've been asked to be patron of; it's called the Mumvuri Project, in Banket, and provides shelter for orphans. I'm planning to write a couple of songs as well, and with the proceeds hope to bolster that charity.

"I've just come to the point in my life where, if I don't feel I'm valued or can give anything back to Zimbabwe cricket, I've got other options and will take them sooner or later."

Not that Henry is planning to give up cricket. He hopes to be fit for the Bangladesh tour, "but I don't know how they [the selectors] will play their cards. I obviously won't be able to play in too many games leading up to that tour, so whether they will pick me straight away remains to be seen, but I'd like to feel that I've got something to give back to Zimbabwe cricket."

With this situation, it is perhaps unlikely that Henry will appear against Bangladesh, as he is not available for the Logan Cup and will have very little, if any, current form for the selectors to judge him on. If he is fit, he may play in a warm-up match or two against the tourists, but will probably need to do well in those to force his way back into the national side.

"If they don't want to pick me because they haven't seen me, that's fine," Henry says. "Like I said, I've got other options, and if they value me they'll have to believe I can deliver the goods, that I had a bad tour and that's all it was – a bad tour. But if they want to write me off, that's fine. I can cite instances of other players who have been injured or out of form for long periods of time and gone straight back into the side as soon as they're fit. If they use different criteria for me, I'll just have to weigh up my options."

He is therefore keeping his options open for the future and his cricketing ambitions on hold. "A lot of that is dependent on form and fitness," he recognizes. "I'm not as fit as I'd like to be and they might not pick me because I'm bowling badly; or I might be bowling well and then get injured. I don't know how much my body's got left for Zimbabwe cricket but I'd still like to take loads of wickets for my country, I'd still like to believe I can give something back to Zimbabwe cricket even now, and hopefully that will be shown to be true. So I'm looking forward to the next few years of my cricket career, and hopefully things will be slightly different from how things have gone for the past seven or eight months."

It is hard to believe that someone of Henry's talent and personality will be lost to Zimbabwe cricket. At 24 he should be at the peak of his powers, and all being well he will overcome the fitness problems that have plagued him for so long. In his short career he has produced some memorable performances. Zimbabwe have had three Test victories to date; Henry made his debut in the first of them, and with his bowling played a vital role in the next two. In the one-day arena, he astounded the cricket world with three wickets in the last over to snatch an amazing victory over India in the 1999 World Cup, and shattered England with six wickets for 19 runs in the South African triangular tournament in Cape Town. There is surely more to come. With fitness and greater consistency, the best is yet to be.

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