Zim spinners target Kiwis

Neil Manthorp in Ahmedabad, India
ZIMBABWE’s cricketers find themselves in the fortunate position of having two bites of the cherry today when they face the Black Caps of New Zealand in their second match of the ICC Cricket World Cup.
Although Zimbabwe are treating the contest as a “must-win” encounter, they could still qualify for the quarter-finals even if the result goes against them.
“We always thought this match might be our best chance of causing an upset,” said selection convenor Alistair Campbell after practice at the Sardar Patel Stadium yesterday. But we still have matches against Sri Lanka and Pakistan to come and victory in any one of them could help us reach the last eight.”
Once again the twin themes of excellent spin bowling and brittle batting dominated the build-up to the game with Black Caps captain, Daniel Vettori, readily admitting that his team expected to face as many as 40 out of 50 overs from the underdogs’ quartet of spinners.
“That is their strength and we expect them to stick to it,” Vettori said.
“The Australians hit us with a trio of fast bowlers and now we’re going to face the opposite. But we’re well prepared and confident that we can cope,” Vettori said.
The New Zealand skipper was too polite to mention his own bowling and the likelihood that his well balanced attack could disrupt a fragile Zimbabwean top order.
Perhaps it is such common knowledge that it didn’t need saying.
Opening batsman Brendan Taylor has been putting in extra work with batting coach Grant Flower ahead of the match and both men maintain a positive outlook.
“Confidence amongst the top six took a bit of a knock against Australia’s pace men but we’ve put that behind us now and the fact that we scored almost 300 in our next match has put us back on track,” Flower said.