Chawaguta still has faith on Lady Chevrons progression

WITH their tournament seemingly having gone up in smoke, Zimbabwe senior women’s national cricket team head coach, Walter Chawaguta still has faith that they could stand a chance of progressing to the next stage of the ongoing 2024 ICC Women’s T20 World Cup Qualifiers, which are taking place in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The Lady Chevrons have so far played three matches, winning one and losing two and are left with one more group game to go, a match that has turned into a crucial must-win encounter.

They face the Netherlands in their last group encounter today.

It wasn’t a rosy start to the campaign for the Lady Chevrons who suffered a shocking six wickets defeat at the hands of minnows, Vanuatu before going on to bounce back against tournament hosts, UAE. With their confidence slowly rising, they hit yet another brick wall after they lost to Ireland by 56 runs on Monday.

The defeat on Monday put their chances of progressing to the last four on the line. They now have to beat the Netherlands today and hope that results from other matches in their group go their way.

Speaking after the match on Monday, Chawaguta believes that anything can happen and they may find themselves in the last four. He is hopeful that his charges will see past Netherlands while they await other results to go on their favour.

He acknowledges that they put themselves in a tight spot.

“It’s always good to have hope, unfortunately we didn’t quite come off today (Monday); bad start with the ball in particular. First and foremost, we have to beat Netherlands and from there, there are a few ways that this can go, so we just hope things go our way, but we have to make sure that we beat Netherlands. At least it keeps us in the hunt and then obviously we then wait and see if some of the games get to fall in our way, obviously, net run rate can come into play as well, so we are not out of the woods yet, but we have made things very difficult for ourselves,” said Chawaguta.

The Lady Chevrons are sitting on fourth place in the five team Group B standings with two points and have a negative net run-rate of -0,900. In third place there is UAE with two points and a net run-rate of 0. Netherlands, in second place also have two points and net run-rate of 1,412. Ireland are sitting at the apex of the standings with four points and massive net run rate of 2,172. Anchoring the standings is Vanuatu with two points and a net run-rate of -2,197.

Chawaguta said going into the match on Monday, they had a clear strategy on how they wanted to navigate it, but things didn’t go their way and how they had planned.

He said their idea was to start well, either with bat or ball, unfortunately it wasn’t the case as Irish batters stood tall in the first innings of the game before the Lady Chevrons went on to crumble with the bat.

He praised the skipper, Mary-Anne Musonda who scored a gallant 48 runs.

“We had long meetings yesterday, we discussed what needed to be done but unfortunately one of the things we spoke about was we have to start well, whether it’s with the ball or with the bat and today we were poor with the ball and our best bowler today didn’t find her length and that just got them going.

“I know Hunter has been struggling for form and we sort of gave her a head start and with the bat again, I didn’t think their bowling was that flash but again we didn’t take full advantage of the conditions, which I thought were very good for batting and 29 runs in the power play in those conditions and the type of bowling, I thought we missed out on an opportunity to get ourselves again on track and from there needing 10s and 11s at one time was always going to be difficult. We needed someone to come off, the captain batted well, unfortunately, she didn’t have any company,” said Chawaguta.

After winning the toss and electing to field first, Zimbabwean bowlers were blown away by Ireland who finished on 176/3 in 20 overs with Amy Hunter scoring a brilliant 71 runs off 50 balls. Chasing a target of 174 runs for victory, the Lady Chevrons only managed to score 120/8 in their 20 overs. Musonda top scored with 48 runs off 39 balls.

The Lady Chevrons had a long batting order with eight batters in the team, but only the skipper managed to get going. For Chawaguta, the way the middle order has been misfiring is a cause for concern.

“It just happened that this was one of the games that we decided we are going to go with eight batters, when we won the toss and decided to bowl first, the thinking was that if we have eight batters and we just restrict them and keep them at a manageable total then we back ourselves to chase it down with eight batters, especially at the power play, the plan was to be a bit more enterprising and positive because we got wickets in hand but like I said, the captain was probably the only one who stood out. Modester tried, but the captain is the only that stood out and hopefully the form will continue, we have to try and win against Netherlands to keep our hopes in this tournament,” he said.

Today’s crunch encounter against the Netherlands is scheduled to start at 1pm at the Tolerance Oval.

The other group in the tournament has Uganda, Sri Lanka, Scotland, Thailand and the United States of America (USA).

The top two teams from each group will proceed to the semi-finals with the winners booking their tickets to Bangladesh for the World Cup, joining the likes of New Zealand, Australia, England, India, Pakistan, South Africa and the West Indies at the global showpiece.—@brandon_malvin