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‘UAE game is basically a final’ – Brendan Taylor

At the end of Windies’ four-wicket victory over Zimbabwe in the ICC Cricket World Cup Qualifier 2018 on Monday, five of the six teams in the mix were still left with a chance of making the top two and going through to the ICC Cricket World Cup 2019.

Zimbabwe, despite the reversal, are in with a very good chance of travelling to the United Kingdom, but to get there, they must beat the United Arab Emirates, the only team to not have a shot at making the cut, on Thursday at Harare Sports Club.

Brendan Taylor, whose excellent 138 against Windies, his second century of the tournament, went in vain, called the UAE fixture ‘a final’, and expected the Zimbabwe team to raise their game for it.

“We know the importance of Thursday against UAE, which is a side that is certainly developing. They’ve got some pretty handy players as well and they will be keen to make a statement. For us, it’s basically a final. We need to win that. It’s pretty clear-cut for us. We know what we have to do,” said Taylor after the defeat.

Zimbabwe looked good for more than the 289 they put up when Taylor was batting with Sikandar Raza, with the scoreboard reading 234/4 at the start of the 43rd over. But wickets started to fall to the Windies pacers, and Zimbabwe had to settle for a competitive total instead of a formidable one.

Taylor was clear that his team took the foot off the pedal at various stages, and were not ‘sharp enough’.


“We need to be sharper than we were today. I think there were a couple of soft dismissals, our spinners weren’t probably as good as they have been in the past in this tournament, and certainly not backed up by our fielding. That’s what let us down today,” he said. “We grafted hard and we felt we had a good total there. Unfortunately, I don’t think we were sharp enough in the field today to try and restrict them.”