Zimbabwe came into the ODI series against India with a lot of confidence after beating Bangladesh in T20Is as well as ODIs, but against Team India, it was a completely different story, they were nowhere close to a competition. India won the first match by 10 wickets and the second by 5 wickets. Two simple and clinical wins in two ODIs for India. India completely outplayed the host in both ODIs.
Indian captain KL Rahul won the toss and invited the host team to bat first. 26 in the first 10 overs, a very slow start makes Zimbabwe’s top order collapse once again and lost the top 4 batters on just 31 runs after 13 overs. Sean Williams’s 42 runs and Ryan Burl’s 39 helped Zimbabwe to reach 161 at the aggregate. Shardul Thakur took 3 and none of the Indian bowlers were wicketless.
In the chase, KL Rahul, who came to open for India, fell victim to Victor Nyauchi after scoring 1 run. Four more wickets fell in the form of Shikhar Dhawan, Shubman Gill, Deepak Hooda, and Ishan Kishan but they all played their part and Samson hits a six to easily cross the target in just 25 overs with 5 wickets left. India shed some sweat today but they were in control.
Zimbabwe used as many as eight bowlers to bowl 25 overs. Again, similar to prior, 18 extra runs in form of wide balls. Zimbabwe was nowhere near winning either of the ODIs. They really need to fix their top-order problems and also line of bowling.
Who said what:
Regis Chakabva: “I think we had a really good fight. Last few games we struggled to pick up early wickets and we managed to do that. Today we were short of a few runs. We were up for the challenge, the bowlers hit their lengths really well.”
KL Rahul: “(On whether he was nervous during the chase)Not really, we do bat deep. Good for some of the guys to get time in the middle. I do need some time in the middle, obviously playing this series was important for me to take some runs and confidence away, but unfortunately, didn’t work out today. They do have some quality bowlers, I saw that in the previous series against Bangladesh as well. The bowlers came strong at us, a good challenge for us. We are here to play good cricket and win, every opportunity is an honor so we want to do it out there next time also to enjoy ourselves and put in a good performance. Wherever we travel, we get good support from Indian fans, very thankful for their support.”