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Eddie Chikamhi
Senior Sports Reporter
ZIMBABWE national senior women’s cricket team coach Gray Brent is excited by the upcoming tour of Thailand as the Lady Chevrons are set to play international cricket for the first time in almost seven months.
The brief bilateral tour, which comprises three Women’s Twenty20 International (WT20I) matches, will take place between April 19 and 23.
All of the matches will be played at the Terdthai Cricket Ground in Bangkok. This will be Zimbabwe’s first tour to Thailand for a bilateral series.
The Lady Chevrons have two weeks to finalise preparations and, ahead of the training camp that began in Harare this week, Brent said he was looking forward to a positive outing in the Asian country.
Despite having last played international cricket back in September 2022, Brent was happy with the amount of domestic cricket played recently in the Domestic Women’s T20 Cup and the Fifty50 Challenge.
“The girls have been embarking in a six-week continuous game cycle, which has been fantastic. Most of the senior players have really stepped up in those provincial games and won games for their sides, which is fantastic to see.
“(The training camp) It’s more of a top up, just sort of getting our game plans honed in. A lot of the hard work has been done already, from the beginning of the year up to now.
“Like I said this camp is mainly a top up where we will just work our game plan, work our rotations and things like that and then from there we go to Thailand.”
The Lady Chevrons last played international cricket in September last year at the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup Qualifier in Abu Dhabi, UAE.
Ironically, Thailand were their last opponents. Zimbabwe won the encounter by seven runs in a third place playoff encounter, having failed to secure automatic qualification among the top two.
This will be the first time that Zimbabwe Women will be travelling to Thailand for an International tour, while Thailand Women have been to Zimbabwe in 2021 for a preparatory series, before travelling back again in November for the ill-fated ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup Global qualifiers.
The three-match tour will begin on April 19 at the Terdthai Cricket Ground in Bangkok.
The second match will be played two days later and then the teams conclude the series on April 23 at the same venue.
The series will be key for the Lady Chevrons as all the matches will carry International Cricket Council WT20I ranking points.
Zimbabwe and Thailand are in close competition in the world T20I rankings table. The Lady Chevrons have a slight edge over their opponents as they are currently ranked 11th, with a rating of 162 points. Thailand are two rungs down on 13th position with a rating of 157 points.
Brent was particularly pleased by the form of the senior players like Chipo Mugeri-Tiripano, who leads the Domestic Women’s T20 runs charts with 271 to her credit, followed by skipper Mary-Ane Musonda who has raked up 266 runs at an average of 133.0.
Bowlers Precious Marange, Francesca Chipare and Loryn Phiri lead the wickets charts in that order.
“I am expecting the girls to do well,” said Brent.
“We have prepared exceptionally well so far. It’s going to be a very interesting tour for us, it’s a very compact tour. There is a lot of cricket in a short space of time.
“So I hope that we can keep all the girls fit and playing so that we can play our best side the whole time. We have definitely chosen the best 15 girls in Zimbabwe at the moment.
“We are excited to see what they are going to produce in Thailand against a strong Thailand side in their home conditions. It won’t be easy but we are certainly going with our strong side and I believe we can have the results go our way,” said Brent.
Meanwhile, Musonda, who is playing T20 cricket in Hong Kong, began her campaign at this year’s Fairbreak Invitational with defending champions Tornadoes on the back foot after losing the opening match to Falcons by 41 runs on Monday.
The Zimbabwe women’s cricket team skipper is among the 90 players from 36 countries taking part in the Fairbreak Invitational in Hong Kong.
The women’s T20 tournament will see six teams engaging in high level contests which will culminate in the final on April 16.
Musonda was given a starting place, as Tornadoes won the toss and elected to field.
Falcons reached 150/6 in their 20 overs and then restricted the defending champions to 109/9 in their allotted overs.
Musonda batted at number six and only managed six runs from nine balls.
Online Reporter