By Kevin Mapasure
The Zimbabwe national cricket team will be looking to build on their win over Ireland in the first One Day International series when they clash in the second today.
Zimbabwe bagged 10 points in the Super League, which is being used by the International Cricket Council as the main route to the 2023 World Cup in India.
Before Wednesday’s win, Zimbabwe had a single win to their tally and will push for a series whitewash to improve their chances of finishing among the top seven.
Captain Craig Ervine, who top-scored for Zimbabwe with 64 on Wednesday, praised the team’s all-round performance, where opening batsman Brendan Taylor set the top with 49 while Sikandar Raza had 59 off 44 balls.
Sean Williams collaborated with Ervine to negotiate a difficult spin phase and the left hander made a total of 33.
Ervine is hoping for a better wicket in today’s match after admitting that the surface on Wednesday was a difficult one to bat on.
He hopes the team can carry the momentum from the first match.
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“Feels really good to start off like this and get 10 points in the bag, it’s only the first game and we have two really important games,” he said. “It was a collective effort with bat and ball today and I think going forward to the next two we are going to need some more of that. I thought BT (Taylor) batted well at the front especially in the first 10 overs and then Raza finished the innings really well for us together with Wessley and Luke who made some contributions. With the bowling Bless (Blessing Muzarabani) and Richie (Richard Ngarava) set the tone for us at the front. We strangled them a little bit with the spin, guys stuck to the guns and it was excellent to get the win. We managed first 10 overs well, the application by the guys excellent. It wasn’t easy, we kind of ground it out. Hopefully the wickets will be a little bit better, today’s was a tough one to bat on. We would have liked to have got two early wickets, didn’t go quite well for us, we know from the T 20 experience that once we get in among the wickets they sort of crumble.”
Zimbabwe produced a good bowling display with Muzarabani taking four wickets for just 29 runs while Wellington Masakadza and Williams equally shared four.
They will be hoping for more of the same.
Follow Kevin on Twitter@kevinmapasure
