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HOBART. — “I won’t be celebrating this victory,” Sikandar Raza told Ian Bishop immediately after Zimbabwe beat Ireland in their ICC Men’s T20 Cricket World Cup opener on Monday. Except he did.
Fifteen minutes before the match ended, Raza completed the catch that gave Zimbabwe the ninth Irish wicket and Blessing Muzarabani, his third. Raza was at backward point when Mark Adair created too much room for himself to properly hit a slower ball on fourth stump and tamely lobbed it to the fielder instead. The catch was fairly routine but the Irish lower order was delaying a Zimbabwe triumph and Raza roared in relief before being surrounded by his smiling team-mates.
Their celebration provided a reminder that this Zimbabwe side has learnt to have fun again, even though they’re taking the first round of the T20 World Cup entirely seriously. They didn’t travel to Australia to play just three matches and everyone from coach Dave Houghton to captain Craig Ervine and now Raza has emphasised that they’ll only consider themselves part of the tournament if they get to the Super 12s.
And on the evidence of the first game, they have the ingredients, and at least one very special one, that can help them get there.
Raza has emerged as their superstar and is having the kind of year cricketing dreams are made of. He has scored three hundreds in six ODI innings and five fifties in nine T20I innings which puts him sixth on this year’s highest run-scorers’ list, with the second-highest strike rate among the top 10 — 154.52.
He has been an international cricketer for nearly 10 years and he is batting like it, with authority and control. But also there’s an ebullience to his strokeplay which can be traced back to the new coach. “He (Houghton) has given us freedom. He has allowed us to bloom and play with responsibility and freedom,” Raza said.
But not at all costs.
“We enjoy that freedom but it comes with accountability as well and we want that. We don’t have to have that freedom that turns over towards reckless[ness]. We’ve taken it upon ourselves as senior guys and said as much as Dave has given us freedom, we will take accountability for that freedom as well.”
Houghton has cultivated a “DavBall”, if you will, style of play which encourages his batters to play expansively and without fear that a mistake could get them dropped from the side. This is why they never took a backwards step against Ireland, whose plan to bounce out the opposition backfired.
According to ESPNcricinfo’s ball-by-ball data, Raza scored exactly half his runs – 41 — with the pull shot. Zimbabwe’s line-up as a whole scored 77 runs off the pull, and 111 off the pull and cut combined. “It’s a risk-reward thing,” Raza said. And some of those risks brought handsome rewards. — ESPNCricinfo
Online Reporter