THE Zimbabwe cricket team’s woeful form continued as they suffered a shocking defeat against Uganda by 5 wickets in an ICC Men’s T20 World Cup Africa qualifier match played in Windhoek, Namibia, on Sunday.
The loss added to their recent woes, leaving their fans and cricket enthusiasts at a loss to explain the team’s poor performance.
Zimbabwe were out-bowled and out-batted by the East African nation, who you would sometimes mistake for being the Test-playing nation during the match.
Uganda captain Brian Masaba sent Zimbabwe in to bat first on a slow pitch. However, the Zimbabwe batters were unable to adjust their innings to the conditions.
The horror show began when Tadiwanashe Marumani needlessly ran himself out on the second ball of Zimbabwe’s innings.
Innocent Kaia and Sean Williams stabilized the Zimbabwe innings but did it at a pedestrian rate, scoring 43 runs from 42 balls.
Credit goes to Uganda bowlers, especially Dinesh Nakrani, who took 3 for 14 in his four overs. He bowled a lot of cutters, took the pace off the ball and was hard to put away.
Zimbabwe innings never got going, with Kaia departing for 23 from 23 balls. Ryan Burl tried to up the ante but was caught by Masaba off the bowling of Henry Ssenyondo for 13 from 8 balls.
On the other end, captain Sikandar Raza continued to pace his innings, knowing that 150 was a par score on that wicket.
The Zimbabwean technical team made a controversial decision by sending Wellington Masakadza to bat ahead of Clive Mandande and Wessly Madhevere. However, the gamble did not pay off as Masakadza struggled to rotate the strike and was eventually bowled by Nakrani for just 6 runs from 14 balls. This turned out to be the biggest shock of the day.
This was a costly knock in the context of the match.
Raza perished for 48 from 39 balls while trying to give his team a challenging target and taking on the Uganda bowlers during the death overs.
Madhevere and Richard helped Zimbabwe get to 136, which gave the Chevrons a fighting chance after having been 109-6 after 17.3 overs.
To win, Zimbabwe needed a strong start. They took 2 wickets in the first 4 overs and restricted Uganda’s power play scoring.
After the power play, Zimbabwe were on top and needed a couple more wickets to press home the advantage.
But Uganda, who had toured Zimbabwe just before the Qualifiers, were going down with a fight.
Alpesh Ramjani took the attack to Zimbabwe, scoring 40 from 26 balls to keep Uganda in the hunt before he played one shot too many and was caught at long-on by Blessing Muzarabani off Williams.
Tendai Chatara was the bowler at the receiving end of Ramjani, and as a seasoned campaigner, he needed to learn from Nakrani, who took pace off the ball, which made stroke play difficult on a slow surface.
Muzarabani and Ngarava kept Zimbabwe in the hunt, bowling tight overs without giving away too many runs.
Raza’s captaincy came to the fore when he persisted with Chatara instead of giving the ball to Masakadza, whose two overs in the power play only went for 7 runs.
Muzarabani summoned all his experience and kept Zimbabwe’s hopes alive when he conceded only two runs in the 17th over to leave Uganda requiring 10 runs an over for a famous victory.
But all that hard work was undone by Chatara, who conceded 20 runs in the next over, to leave Uganda requiring 10 runs from 12 balls with 6 wickets in hand.
Ngarava, who had gone off the field in the 16th over due to injury, came back to bowl the penultimate over and took the big wicket of Riazat Ali Shah.
Still, he conceded 7 runs to leave Uganda on the cusp of history, requiring 3 runs to win in the final over.
Raza bowled 4 byes as Madande failed to stop the ball down the legside, and Uganda recorded a famous victory. More importantly, they allowed themselves to qualify for the T20 World Cup.
Zimbabwe will now have to wait for certain results to go their way and hope to win all their remaining matches if they entertain any hopes of making it to the USA and West Indies in June next year.
