New Zealand nightmare stalks Zim

nightmare of their 10-wicket humiliation by New Zealand stalking every step they took, as their 2011 ICC Cricket World Cup bandwagon shifted its base to Sri Lanka where they will play two big matches.
Alan Butcher and his men will have to beat either Pakistan or Sri Lanka, or win both games on that leg of their World Cup campaign, to give themselves a chance to reach the quarter-finals.
Zimbabwe’s last game is against Kenya at EdenGardensin Kolkata here in India.
The initial game plan for the Zimbabweans was that they would beat Canada, which they did, and also beat New Zealand, which they didn’t, and hoping to surprise either Pakistan or Sri Lanka.
But after New Zealand turned the screws, with a performance that their skipper Daniel Vettori described as a perfect day, as they hammered Zimbabwe by 10 wickets here in Ahmedabad, the game plan has changed.
Crucially, after that mauling by the Black Caps, how will the Zimbabweans regain their confidence and turn up the heat against Sri Lanka and Pakistan who are both considered to be stronger than New Zealand?
Refreshingly, what is clear is that the Zimbabwean side can do far better than the morass of mediocrity that they turned on here on Friday.
The problem is that you never know when that will happen.
Frustratingly for Zimbabwean fans, their team always struggles to get everything right, especially in the big games, and if they find their touch with their batting, then something will go wrong with either their fielding or bowling.
Batting has been a big letdown, especially when the big boys come around, and it has now become very clear that Zimbabwe are likely to struggle to post a total beyond 200 when they play the full members.
Brendan Taylor has been crying out for a reliable opening partner for some time now and it’s an area that has cost Zimbabwe heavily with the selectors’ decision to bring Charles Coventry for that role in this World Cup turning into a disaster.
Tatenda Taibu, coming in as number three, has turned into a shadowy opener, either facing the ball as early as the second ball, as was the case against Canada, or as early as the moment after Coventry faces his second ball, as was the case against New Zealand.
While Taibu thrived against Canada, he couldn’t repeat the magic against New Zealand and, after getting a life when he was dropped after offering a sitter, he perished next ball after being trapped lbw.
Captain Elton Chigumbura also fell cheaply but his dismissal was diabolical, given that he was so far out of his crease, and that the third umpire could not make a decision, when he called for a review, passing the responsibility back to the umpire on the field, highlighted the controversy.
Chigumbura was clearly more than 2,5 metres out when he charged to a ball from Vettori that hit him in front of middle and he was given out lbw.
England batsman Ian Bell was walking, in the game against India, when the Hawk Eye trajectory showed that the ball that trapped him was going to hit the stumps.
But, having been given not out in the original decision, forcing India to ask for a review in the UDRS system, Bell was saved by the 2,5 metre rule.
Chigumbura, though, was not talking about the disappointment of his controversial dismissal on Friday, which was the smaller picture, but the horror show against New Zealand, which was the bigger picture, and the pain that came from the reality that they could have done far better.
After all, on a good batting track, they had also won a good toss and made the right decision to bat.
“It was one of our worst performances,” said Chigumbura. “We have to pick ourselves up for the next matches.”
The skipper highlighted that his team appeared to be under pressure, once they realised that they had a good chance to beat New Zealand, and somehow they simply couldn’t handle the weight of expectations.
“I looked again at most of our dismissals and I found out that we went out playing across the line, which is something that we shouldn’t be doing at this level,” said Chigumbura.
“We also have to work on getting the good starts because right now we are not doing that and by losing a lot of wickets early, we are putting ourselves under pressure.”
Chigumbura knows that his team can play far better than they did against New Zealand and, maybe, that is the reason why, instead of throwing the towel and surrendering, he said they should challenge both Sri Lanka and Pakistan confident that they can win.
Zimbabwe’s teams, in recent years, have been selected on the basis of how the players perform against Bangladesh, given that the Tigers are the team that they usually play against at international level.
That means a player like Chamu Chibhabha saw his World Cup hopes destroyed simply because he couldn’t play against Abdur Razzak, in his own den, even though the opener had shown good touch against South Africa.When Zimbabwe faced Australia in their first match here, it wasn’t the spinners who came at them but the pacemen, against whom Chibhabha, dropped for his struggles against spin in Bangladesh, had shown promise.
Chigumbura believes that as long as his team doesn’t play many matches against the other established sides, so that they can work on their weaknesses outside the World Cup environment, chances were that they will struggle to find consistency.
The truth, too, is that the selectors will probably base their decisions on flawed and inadequate analysis.
Zimbabwe will have to improve their batting, the building of partnerships, basics like rotating strike, if they are to translate their natural talents into big scores that matter at such grand stages like the World Cup.
They will also have to exorcise the fear factor, which appears to stalk them whenever they play any of the big teams, and find the courage to compete knowing that they have a good chance of winning. Someone will have to help Taylor with the opening duties and the Zimbabweans yesterday called Vusi Sibanda into the team to replace the injured Sean Williams.
Williams, who showed good touch against Canada, injured his right thumb in training on Thursday but felt he could still make it and was even included in the team for the match against New Zealand.
However, he couldn’t make it and was rushed from the stadium, shortly before the game got underway, to the hospital as his World Cup ended.
Yesterday the ICC confirmed that their Event Technical Committee of the World Cup 2011 had approved Sibanda as a replacement for Williams.
“The confirmation was conveyed to Zimbabwe Cricket on behalf of the committee,” the ICC said in a statement.
The decision to draft in Sibanda has, however, angered those who believe that Hamilton Masakadza is being given a raw deal and yesterday they poured their anger on the internet social sites.Sibanda as played 85 ODIs for Zimbabwe and scored 1 796 runs with an average of about 22.
“Williams is the 12th player to be replaced in the tournament after compatriots Edward Rainsford, Tinotenda Mawoyo and Sean Ervine, West Indies’s Dwayne Bravo, Adrian Barath and Carlton Baugh, Australia’s Nathan Hauritz and Michael Hussey, Praveen Kumar of India, England’s Eoin Morgan and Sohail Tanvir of Pakistan were earlier replaced,” the ICC said in their statement.