adminNgqabutho Moyo Sports Reporter
ZIMBABWE lost the second One Day International match to South Africa and in the process surrendered the series to the Proteas in a match played at Queens Sports Club in Bulawayo yesterday.
The hosts failed to take heed of their coach’s advice to improve on their batting and lost by 61 runs as the visitors took a commanding 2-0 lead in the three-match series.
After a good start, Zimbabwe managed to bowl out the Proteas for 257 runs but still failed to chase the modest total, finishing on 196 all out.
Zimbabwe have only tasted victory in two games in over 30 clashes with South Africa.
Matabeleland Tuskers spin bowler John Nyumbu bowled out South Africa’s opening batsmen Hashim Amla for 15 runs off 21 balls in the seventh over of the match and Quinton de Kock was caught out by Elton Chigumbura for 38 runs.
Zimbabwe captain Elton Chigumbura said that he was impressed with the team’s bowling but felt they came short with their batting.
“I am happy with the way we started, we did exceptionally well on the bowling side but I feel we still need to improve on our batting, we lost a lot of wickets too early in the match,” said Chigumbura.
Zimbabwe’s plan to chase and win the match in less than 40 overs was shattered when three important wickets were lost by the hosts. Zimbabwe’s top batsmen Masakadza, Sikandar Raza, Sean Williams, Nyumbu, Neville Madziva and Chigumbura fell cheaply.
Brian Vitori was not out with 20 runs from eight balls.
Faf du Plessis scored half a century while teammate David Millan was just five runs from getting a 50 before he was bowled out by Nyumbu in the 35th over of the match.
Although the bowlers impressed, it was in the batting department that Zimbabwe lost the match.
Zimbabwe’s batting lineup only got one half century from Sean Williams who scored his 17th 50 from 84 deliveries.
With Zimbabwe coming out of a mild, dry winter, the pitches in Bulawayo are starved of life, which certainly helps to negate the threat of the Proteas pacemen, but by the same token, their batsmen lacked sufficient pace to extract any opportunity from the only chance they had to square up the series in Bulawayo.
Vitori, who had come in for Shingi Masakadza, was in good form taking the wickets of David Millan and Ryan McClaren.
derick.khumalo