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We will continue being aggressive — Taylor

Sport
BULAWAYO — Brendan Taylor, the Zimbabwe national cricket captain, has said his team will continue to play attacking, aggressive Test cricket, even though chasing a win instead of playing for the draw against New Zealand in Bulawayo may have cost them the match. New Zealand won by 34 runs after setting Zimbabwe a steep 366 […]

BULAWAYO — Brendan Taylor, the Zimbabwe national cricket captain, has said his team will continue to play attacking, aggressive Test cricket, even though chasing a win instead of playing for the draw against New Zealand in Bulawayo may have cost them the match. New Zealand won by 34 runs after setting Zimbabwe a steep 366 to chase for victory.

On a traditionally flat pitch, Zimbabwe decided to bat for a result, despite needing 305 on the final day with eight wickets standing.

A century from Taylor and a half-century by Tatenda Taibu kept them in the hunt, but a spectacular collapse, in which they lost six wickets for 44 runs, saw them end up on the losing side. Taylor said he had no regrets about thinking positively.

“If we want to become better cricketers, we have to play like that,” he said. “If you don’t test yourself, you won’t know how far you can go.”

Taylor has only captained Zimbabwe in three Tests, but has already become known for brave decision-making. In Zimbabwe’s comeback Test against Bangladesh in Harare in August, Taylor declared Zimbabwe’s second innings on 291 for 5 early on the fourth day, setting Bangladesh 375 to win.

Critics said Zimbabwe should have batted longer to ensure Bangladesh were out of the game, but Taylor preferred to dangle the carrot instead. The result was a comprehensive 130-run win for Zimbabwe with two sessions to spare.

When Taylor found himself in the opposite situation, with New Zealand leaving Zimbabwe a gettable target, he accepted the challenge. “You have to be realistic and we felt that it was realistic to go for the win.”

Even though Zimbabwe have a short batting line-up, which Taylor admits “stops at No 7,” Taylor felt with two frontline batsmen occupying the crease for most of the day the target was within reach.

He shared a 108-run fourth-wicket partnership with Taibu and believed one of them would take Zimbabwe over the line. “I wanted us both to spend a session or a session-and-a-half at the crease and thought that if one of us was there at the end, we could win.”

It was when the pair were dismissed the collapse began, which raised questions about Zimbabwe’s lack of stability in the lower-middle order. “We are missing some guys through injury,” Taylor said.

“Elton Chigumbura is struggling with a hamstring injury and Graeme Cremer has been out for a while with a knee injury. They could really make a difference.”

While the cricketing world was touched, disappointed and some even a little heartbroken for Zimbabwe after they lost, Taylor said the team were not overcome by a sense of gloom.

“Within 20 minutes afterwards we were OK. We had a meeting and everyone was very praiseworthy of each other. We gave it our all; for five days we played good cricket and to take it late into the fifth day we knew we had done something right.”

Since their return to Test cricket, Zimbabwe have won one Test and lost two, won four one-day internationals (ODI), including a record run-chase against New Zealand, but lost seven and been defeated in four Twenty20 (T20) internationals. Taylor said it’s not the numbers, but the progress that matters.