5th T20I | Zimbabwe vs Bangladesh | May 12, 2024

[Googly]

Great game. Not a great standard, strangely.
Commentator said Dutch needed to win to help us. Caused me much confusion for a few minutes. I'd been cheering wildly for the Irish

[zimbos_05]

Wes is not 6ft 1in

Four different sources state it. Didn't believe it myself, but that's what they quoted.

Either way, the crux of the point stands

[secretzimbo]

Other than Gumbie I think Wes is the shortest person in our squad. I have stood within a few meters of him and he is significantly shorter than me and I'm 5'11.

[ZIMDOGGY]

We just aren’t a T20 country
Almost all our bats appear bedy classically trained. One of the reasons we seem to put up more of a fight in tests in terms of batting.

What always surprises me with our guys is why they don’t swing more in the power plays. There’s way more room for error as you just need to clear the circle for the most part. Players really should be clamouring to open as a big score really sets you up in this format for a Zim career.

I think it's a mindset. Raza is our only T20 bat with real self belief. The reality is that a lot of our batters haven't actually had that much coaching and they're left to their own devices in the formative years. I wish they'd had classic formal coaching! The white guys generally have a better grounding, having gone to better schools and had private coaching..and actively involved parents. One has to wonder how good some of the other guys would have been with the same start.
Everyone worries about a collapse and they bat conservatively, not having too much faith in the others. The mindset seems to be to post 150 so we've got something to bowl at.
We hardly ever get a good start. A huge percentage of games are won or lost in the first 6 overs. It puts so much pressure on the others, so hard to play with any freedom coming in at 30-3 after 6.
Then of course we don't have many guys that can lace a good ball, they just don't have the shot. You don't often need it here, you're going to get a bad ball that you can score off. I mean why play a higher risk shot when you know you're going to get a bad ball and you want to get a good score, pad your stats, put your hand up for selection.
It's not dissimilar when we're playing an international- a batter knows that 25 off 20 guarantees him another game.
Then we have guys with poor shot selection and poor placement. Poor in international terms.
If we played the big teams the better guys would figure it out. We no longer have that luxury, except in a world cup, and we can't ever seem to qualify, caught between a rock and a hard place. This continual failure to quali has had devastating consequences. Maybe when we host we'll turn the corner?

Also feel we pushed the wrong guys for the format. They honestly should have been improving Cephas’ defence than playing Craig if we look at it fairly. Cephas tees off and our chances of winning quadruple. In T20s that is. 6 or 7 years ago the balance of games was 50/50. If Cephas had been given the almost 30 games Marumani has gotten I believe we might have had something there.

You can also see how almost all the kids now can clear the ropes. They have at least one shot they know if they get a good connection, nobody will catch it. This is against spin or pace. How many sixes did we see Craig, Sean and Regis hit off pace? Hami, BT and Raza are the only senior guys who adjusted

Worth remembering with Ceohas that he only started making runs around 2018 when he was mid thirties. Then failed.
He needed to have peaked a bit earlier and get a rep. He just left it too late.