Match thread - Game 2 - Sth African Composite XI vs Zimbabwe

[brmtaylor.com admin]

When you have Streak, Price, Brent, Taylor and Williams all fighting for three places, well, that's just stupid - there is room for all of them in the first eleven.

1. V. Sibanda
2. B. Taylor
3. T. Taibu (wk)
4. S. Williams
5. C. Chibhabha
6. H. Masakadza
7. H. Streak
8. E. Chigumbura
9. P. Utseya (c)
10. G. Brent
11. R. Price

That should be the apolitical eleven, IMO. Not exactly a bad batting lineup either, First Class centuries to each player.

Agreed, but i stil feel your underestimating Dabengwa. He has been the only consistent player on the zimbabwe side, and everyone straight away goes and drops him because he hasnt done anything majorly spectacular.

He is consistent, but I don't think he is better than anyone in the above eleven.

[maehara]

Must have been a shocking pitch for such low scores.

CricInfo report also blames the pitch. Although given Zim's 2nd-innings total, it can't have been that bad...

[brmtaylor.com admin]

Must have been a shocking pitch for such low scores.

CricInfo report also blames the pitch. Although given Zim's 2nd-innings total, it can't have been that bad...

Yeah, agreed. In my match report I wrote:

A win is a win, but frankly, this South African team is very weak and we should not be asking ourselves if Zimbabwe will beat them, but by how large the margin will be. A 10 wicket win in the first game was a good comprehensive win, but 51 runs is too close for comfort. While the pitch was bad - as demonstrated in Zimbabwe's second innings, it wasn't impossible to score off, and in reality, Zimbabwe should have posted 250 in the first innings too.

[maehara]

Great minds think alike - I had similar sentiment in my own match report:

As unlikely as it may have seemed at close of play on Thursday, Zimbabwe mopped up Composite’s tail on Saturday morning to secure a 51-run win and an unassailable 2-0 lead in the SuperSport Challenge, with just one match left to play. Elton Chigumbura took 5/33 to help reduce Composite to 98 all out - which does make the result look more like the vagaries of a dodgy pitch, than a match based on talent. A win is a win, but quite a few of the Zimbabwe side will need to take a look at how they’ve performed this match, as it wasn’t really up to the standards we’d like to expect.

[brmtaylor.com admin]