D-Day with the Black Caps

www.zimcricket.org

Thursday, 3 March 2011

Zimbabwe are in the fortunate position of having two bites of the cherry on Friday when they face the Black Caps of New Zealand in their second match of the ICC Cricket World Cup. Although the squad are treating the contest as a ‘must-win’ encounter, they could still qualify for the quarter finals even if the result goes against them.

“We always thought this match might be our best chance of causing an upset,” said selection convenor Alistair Campbell after practise at the Sardar Patel Stadium on Thursday. “But we still have matches against Sri Lanka and Pakistan to come and victory in any one of them could help us reach the last eight.”

Once again the twin themes of excellent spin bowling and brittle batting dominated the build-up to the game with Black Caps captain, Daniel Vettori, readily admitting that his team expected to face as many as 40 out of 50 overs from the underdogs’ quartet of spinners.

“That is their strength and we expect them to stick to it,” Vettori said. “The Australians hit us with a trio of fast bowlers and now we’re going to face the opposite. But we’re well prepared and confident that we can cope,” Vettori said.

The New Zealand skipper was too polite to mention his own bowling and the likelihood that his well balanced attack could disrupt a fragile Zimbabwean top order. Perhaps it is such common knowledge that it didn’t need saying.

Opening batsman Brendan Taylor has been putting in extra work with batting coach Grant Flower ahead of the match and both men maintain a positive outlook.

“Confidence amongst the top six took a bit of a knock against Australia’s pace men but we’ve put that behind us now and the fact that we scored almost 300 in our next match has put us back on track,” Flower said. “That doesn’t mean that we’ll score 300 again, but we know what we need to do in order to be competitive.”

While Zimbabwe are full of confidence after their resounding 175-run victory against the lowly Canadians, Vettori’s men are battling to come to terms with both erratic and inconsistent form as well as the ongoing aftermath of the devastating earthquake last week in the South Island city of Christchurch.

“The thoughts of the players and many of those watching in Zimbabwe will be with those who are suffering and grieving in the aftermath of this terrible tragedy,” said Minister of Sport, Arts and Culture, David Coltart.

Zimbabwe are likely to name an unchanged team from the match against Canada. The match is a day game and begins at 9:30am local time (6:00am CAT).

Zimbabwe XI (likely): Brendan Taylor, Charles Coventry, Tatenda Taibu, Craig Ervine, Sean Williams, Elton Chigumbura (captain), Greg Lamb, Prosper Utseya, Graeme Cremer, Ray Price, Chris Mpofu.