Online Reporter
ZIMBABWE’S seamers picked up all 20 wickets in a Test match, for the first time in 33 years, and for only the second time in their history, in their crushing win over Bangladesh.
The Chevrons crushed Bangladesh by an innings and 85 runs in the one-off Test which ended inside three days at Harare Sports Club on Tuesday.
All their 20 wickets were shared among their battery of pace bowlers – captain Richard Ngarava, Blessing Muzarabani, Brad Evans and Newman Nyahuri.
“I think we have got a nice pack of bowlers, champion bowlers,” Ngarava said. “The results can always show themselves. The hard work that the boys have put in got us to where we are now.
“To be honest, as I walked into this Test match, there’s one thing I was thinking about, which is making history.
“Zimbabwe, from before, had never won back-to-back Test series or any other series, so it’s quite special to be winning back-to-back series.”
It also marked the first time, in 33 years, that the Chevrons’ pacers have taken all 20 wickets in a Test match.
The only time this happened was in Rawalpindi, in Pakistan, in December 1993.
Eddo Brandes, Heath Streak and David Brain shared all the 20 wickets in the second Test which Pakista won by 52 runs.
Brandes picked six wickets, Streak took eight wickets and Brain took six wickets.
He took four wickets in the first innings, the same as Nyamhuri, the teenage left-arm quick picked in Bangladesh’s first innings.
In the second dig, Muzarabani returned figures of 4 for 65 while Ngarava took three.
“In every sport you play as a unit and everyone contributed there and I really feel like that’s what got us to where we are,” Ngarava said.
“Not forgetting the hard work the boys have put in the past two months. It is quite important to develop these habits.
“We work together as a team and we definitely get to pick who’s on their peak or who’s having a good day on the park.
“That one guy is going to take the team forward, but everyone else gets to support in there and hopefully it continues for a long time.”
Ngarava reserved special praise for Nyamhuri.
“I quite like Newman in the sense that he’s quite open to learning new things,” Ngarava said.
“He’s quite young and I feel like it’s a privilege to have me and Bless [Muzarabani] in there, guys who can just actually share experience and I’m really proud of him and how quickly he’s learning.
“I am not going to say much about Blessing. He is a champion bowler and we expect him to keep going.”
Zimbabwe have now won two Tests in a row.
The Chevrons’ previous win was in October 2025, when they defeated Afghanistan by an innings and 73 runs, their then biggest Test win.
Until then, they had won only two out of 18 Test matches since the start of 2021..
“There’s always ups and downs in life and it’s part of it,” Ngarava said. “You always learn from bad experiences and good experiences as well.
“It was quite important for us to go through that period and we got to a point where we mastered how we need to go about things and how we need to play our cricket.
“Of course, imparting a positive mindset in each and every player who comes into the dressing room. These things happen. At the end of the day we back the work we did before.”
Ngarava said the successive Test wins in Harare have given Zimbabwe the confidence of utilising the home advantage against touring sides.
“We’ve got an idea of what conditions we have. We’ve got an advantage of the home soil. Whichever team comes here, we know the conditions better.
“We’re in winter right now. We definitely knew we just needed to walk out there and bowl as many good balls as we can.” – Sports Reporter/Cricinfo
