Houghton laments Chevrons’ poor batting

OVER the past few months, the Zimbabwe senior men’s national cricket team has had the going tough in international cricket and will end the year 2023 on yet another sorry state after losing their last series of the year against Ireland on Sunday afternoon.

The Chevrons lost the three-match One Day International (ODI) series, played at Harare Sports Club, against Ireland 2-0 to end their miserable year on a low note. This was Ireland’s first ever ODI series win in Zimbabwe.

The seven wicket defeat, on Sunday in the series decider, just about summed up the poor state the game has found itself in the past few months.

Zimbabwe needed to win the last match to make sure that the series ended at one all after the first match was abandoned due to rain in the 26th over. However, it was not meant to be for the Chevrons, who in three matches batted first but were dismal with the bat.

The Chevrons’ batting throughout the series left a lot to be desired. It was woeful, to say the least as they couldn’t even breach the 200 run mark in all the three games. Their highest score was 197 runs in the third and final match of the series and is not something to be proud of from a team playing on home soil.

In the three matches played, only one player managed to score a half century and that was Joylord Gumbie on Sunday where he fell for 72 runs off 106 balls. The Chevrons were missing the services of veterans Sean Williams and Craig Ervine due to injuries and the replacements failed to step up to the occasion.

The rest could not justify their selection into the team.

It was with the bat that they lost the series and head coach, Dave Houghton concurred that their batting has been very poor, leaving a lot to be desired. Houghton did not mince his words, saying that things are getting worse with the bat.

“I think we have been playing some bad cricket for a while now. But, I think it’s also pretty clear to see that our batting has been a disaster for the last few months and it’s not getting any better. I knew when I came in that we weren’t a long batting line up and that we had some senior players.

“The thing about having senior and junior players is, you need your seniors to stand up and they give courage to the rest of the team but unfortunately on this tour we have lost all our senior players to injury, suspension and everything else and the up and coming batsman have just not been good enough, so that make it very difficult to compete. We are always 50 or 100 short of what we need to be competitive.

“We should have been scoring, on average, 250 on a 50 over game. Today (Sunday) we were set up, at one stage, we should have got 240, but we ended up getting 197 so we have been letting ourselves down with the bat on every single occasion,” said Houghton.

He went on to add that they need to spend more time in the nets in order to get the best results. Apart from that, Houghton said they need to regain the confidence which they have lost; adding that maybe a different voice is needed in the change room.

“The problem is just purely a confidence thing. It’s not easy to just put your hand on something and change the confidence within the team. When you start to lose a couple of games, you lose the confidence and so you will know when I first came in, we played a completely different brand of cricket that comes with confidence, you play with positiveness with the bat, put pressure on the opposition and run down at the wicket at their batsman, play a few funky shots and we going.

“We are not playing one shot like that now and that is confidence. If the confidence is gone, as we have lost a couple of games, it’s gotten worse and worse. So it needs to change, maybe we should bring in a couple of consultants, different voices in the change room, maybe that can help change things,” he said.

The Chevrons are set to tour Sri Lanka early next year and Houghton believes they should start working now with the assistance of the ground staff, creating similar wickets to those they will find in the Sub-Continent so as to try and have a feel of what to expect.

The first match of the series was called off with Zimbabwe struggling on 121/6 in 25, 3 overs before going on to lose the second match of the series by four wickets. Batting first, the Chevrons were bowled out for 166 runs in 42,5 overs and Ireland chased down the target in 40,1 overs, finishing on 170/6.

Despite their batting woes, winning the toss and electing to bat first in wickets that were under covers for most of the time during the series was one questionable decision.

In the last match, where the number of overs were reduced to 40 after rain disruption, Zimbabwe were bowled out for 197 runs in exactly 40 overs and the visitors went on to finish on 204/3 with 13 balls left to spare in the match.
Ireland also won the three match T20I series 2-1. – @brandon_malvin