IT HAS been a tough beginning for Zimbabwe in their cricket tour of the West Indies after Sunday’s second Twenty20 (T20) loss.
The West Indies have taken this series 2-0, to add to the 3-0 whitewash in the one-day international (ODI) series, heading into the first Test on March 12.
The Zimbabweans play Sagicor in a three-day preparatory match on Thursday and this is the best opportunity to right the wrongs before the first Test. The pattern of losses has been so far rather obvious from the ODIs — failure to get a decent start if we are batting. In the first T20, none of our four top order batsmen Vusi Sibanda, Hamilton Masakadza, Brendan Taylor and Sean Ervine could give Zimbabwe a decent 100, but managed just 56 runs. A little tinkering on Sunday to bring in Chamu Chibhabha produced just 75 runs from the top four although Zimbabwe were taking wickets at regular intervals and managed to restrict the hosts to 158.
Basically, Zimbabwe have not been able to convert the starts into big figures despite the rather decent starts. Captain Taylor is off colour. In the bowling department, we have no strike bowler leading from the front.
Talking of the selectors, Ervine has been in form with the bat, making 49 from the T20s and 121 from the two ODIs he played after being dropped from the first. He is returning home because he is not part of the Test squad. He has acclimatised and really Tymicen Maruma is not much of an alternative. Sean Williams will be a good addition to the team, though.
And this makes the West Indies a very good side. Their captain Darren Sammy says they played like world champions, clearly showing there was no fight from the Zimbabweans on Sunday.
“We didn’t just win, we beat them convincingly. That’s the kind of performances, whether we play Australia or Zimbabwe, we look to put in on the cricket field,” Sammy said summing it up.
And Zimbabwe are paying the price for leaving behind bowling and batting coaches Heath Streak and Grant Flower respectively. We are not playing enough games, against competitive sides, to build up the confidence of the boys. Fine, it’s not easy to play the big teams — India, South Africa, Australia, Sri Lanka and England — but let’s just do with more of Bangladesh, Pakistan, the Windies and New Zealand.
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Where is the spirit, boys? The body language perhaps says it all — showing a team that should be able to fight, but says, well let’s get this over as soon as possible.
Zimbabwe Cricket, very soon, will be like Zifa — choosing to ignore the development of the game and focusing on “other” issues like racism. This seriously threatens the future of the game.
We need to focus on the Test matches ahead and avoid an embarrassment. It won’t be easy though, but the players need to put their minds into the game and hope Thursday’s practice match will build that.
