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The Southern Africans were blown away in the ODI and Twenty20 series, formats of the game they were expected to compete, and now face a tough time in the longer version of the game.
They haven’t played a Test match since touring New Zealand at the beginning of last year and, when matches are so few and far between, there is no room for a team to settle and get into its groove.
In contrast, the Windies are a team that is on a revival and, being the world Twenty20 champions, they showed the gulf in class in their matches against Zimbabwe.
It’s certain Zimbabwe will lose but they have to fight and that’s all that Englishman Butcher, who has guided their ship in the past few years, can hope off as he signs off in the Caribbean sunshine and returns to the spring of home.
The three-day tour match between Zimbabwe and Sagicor High Performance Centre ended in a draw after both sides failed to wrest a decisive advantage.
SHPC added 17 runs to their overnight score before they were dismissed for 230, 25 runs short of the Zimbabweans’ first-innings total.
Legspinner Graeme Cremer added two wickets to his five-wicket haul on day two to finish with match figures of 7 for 79. He will have to play very well, in this Test, for Zimbabwe to have a chance. Vusi Sibanda scored a half century off 108 balls, including 13 fours, and will be expected to play another key role for the visitors.
Hamilton Masakadza and Malcolm Waller had a decent game with the bat for the visitors ahead of the first Test that gets underway today.
All-rounder Marlon Samuels returns to the West Indies squad after a two-month injury break, having been picked for the first Test.
Off spinner Sunil Narine did not feature in the 13-man squad, and in his place Shane Shillingford came in.
Samuels had missed the limited-overs leg of the Zimbabwe series after picking up a facial injury during the Big Bash League, Australia’s T20 competition, in January.
Fast bowler Shannon Gabriel, who debuted in the Lord’s Test last year but was then sidelined by a stress reaction in his back, made a comeback.
Two exclusions of note on the fast-bowling front included Ravi Rampaul and Fidel Edwards.
Rampaul had returned to the domestic circuit in February after two months out due to knee trouble and had said at the time that he was “100% fit”.
Edwards had taken a match-haul of seven in his previous Test match – against Bangladesh in November. His last competitive match was on February 14, in the Bangladesh Premier League.
The other players to miss out from the squad that played the Bangladesh series, which was West Indies’ previous Test assignment, include batsmen Kirk Edwards and Assad Fudadin.
Narine had had a poor run in that series, taking three wickets in two Tests at an average of 114.33. Twenty-three-year-old left-arm spinner Veerasammy Permaul, who had a relatively better series with eight wickets at 31.62, retained his place.
Wicketkeeper Denesh Ramdin kept his role as Test vice-captain, while Chris Gayle returned after asking to skip the limited-overs series against Zimbabwe. Experienced batsman Ramnaresh Sarwan, who returned for West Indies on last month’s limited-overs tour of Australia after a contentious 18-month break, was not handed a Test comeback. — Sports Reporter/Cricinfo.
Online Reporter