National pride at stake as Zimbabwe take on India

Sports Reporter
NATIONAL pride will be at stake when Zimbabwe take on India in the two One Day International matches set for Bulawayo’s ceremonial home of cricket Queens Sports Club.The first of the two ODIs will be played tomorrow with the final game set for Saturday.

India have reached an unassailable 3-0 lead and the two remaining matches in Bulawayo are more of dead rubbers.
The Zimbabwe national team assistant coach Stephen Mangongo said they are coming to Bulawayo for a change of fortunes.

“There is a lot to play for in Bulawayo. We might be down but we are not out because we are not just coming to fulfill a fixture. We are going to fight for a positive result. As I said before, we respect India but we should realise that we are not in the game to make numbers but to compete.

“If we do things right, that’s the basics, hopefully the situation in Bulawayo might change as well,” said Mangongo.
Zimbabwe lost the first match of the series by six wickets last Wednesday before going down to a 58-run defeat in the second ODI two days later.

India sealed the series on Sunday with a seven-wicket win in a game where their spin bowler Amit Mishra took four wickets and in the process helped his team restrict Zimbabwe to 183 runs after 46 overs.

Zimbabwe who have been in camp for almost two months preparing for the India tour according to Mangongo should have won one of the matches but were let down by schoolboy errors.

“To be trailing 0-3 looks terrible considering that we spent two months preparing for these matches. We had opportunities to win the last ODI in Harare but we let ourselves down with numerous fielding mistakes and even dropped catches. At one time we were at 64-4 but those drops which followed cost us.

“Credit goes to the bowlers who did well to restrict the visitors but now it’s time for our batsmen to live to the billing and score more runs. If you look at India’s batting, they are not doing well but in all their three matches, at least one of their top four batsmen have done well. Our top order has to give us more runs,” Mangongo said.

Zimbabwe’s batting hopes will be pinned on opening batsman Vusi Sibanda, Sikander Raza, Hamilton Masakadza and skipper Brendan Taylor.
Former national team captain Elton Chigumbura and Malcolm Waller who are in the middle order are also expected to score significant runs for Zimbabwe if they want to beat India.

On the other hand, Shukar Dhawan and Virat Kohli are expected to lead India’s batting attack.