Following the match, Zimbabwe‘s head coach, Dave Houghton, unleashed a barrage of criticism on his players, calling it “one of the worst games” and “embarrassingly bad” in his time coaching Zimbabwean cricket.
At Namibia‘s United Cricket Club Ground in Windhoek, matches are being played for the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup Africa Region Qualifier 2023. In the inaugural match of the event, Zimbabwe faced Namibia and lost badly, losing by seven wickets. When batting first, Zimbabwe’s hitters were unable to play attacking strokes against Namibia’s accurate bowling, resulting in a meager 132 runs in the allotted 20 overs. With 36 runs scored, Craig Ervine was the inning’s top scorer. Namibia won the match by seven wickets after easily chasing the goal in just 14.4 overs.
“As far as I’m concerned, we got everything wrong; therefore, to answer your question, what went wrong? Today we were shockingly awful. That was definitely one of the worst games I have ever worn a Zimbabwean jersey for.
“I have no idea why it happens at all. We train rigorously and methodically. The boys put in a lot of effort and had plenty of enthusiasm before the game, but we fielded mediocrely and batted poorly, which was followed by poor bowling,” Houghton stated, via ESPN Cricinfo.
He emphasized that although Zimbabwe are not playing well and appear to have devils in the wicket when their batters are at the crease, the surface looks fantastic for batting when the opposition batsmen come in to bat.
“When you are not playing particularly well and when you have lost a little bit of confidence as we have, we see demons in the wicket when we bat, but when we bowl, there are no demons in the wicket,” Houghton stated. Thus, based on my observation of that wicket, which appears to be a decent batting strip, I would have predicted that we would easily score 170-180.
“We were not batting positively; we were giving up a lot of wickets, and we are currently batting carelessly.” They demonstrated it when they chased, and I thought it was a really terrific batting pitch,” he continued.
Despite Zimbabwe’s dismal start to the competition, Dave Houghton expressed his confidence that the country will improve and perform well in the qualifiers.
“It’s a terrible start to this tournament, but we do know we’ve got to win the next five games and still qualify,” Dave Houghton stated. That’s not my best or happiest day, but it’s significant for us anyway. We ought to all be apologizing to our fans right now, in my opinion.
We can’t just sit back, take it easy, and believe we are superior to everyone else. We must show up and play authentic cricket,” he continued.
India
