Image Credit- ICC
Men’s T20 World Cup Africa Qualifier opener Zimbabwe’s
defeat against Namibia was criticised by head coach Dave Houghton, who
described it as “embarrassingly bad” and “one of the worst
games” he has ever been involved with.
After holding Zimbabwe to 132 for 8, Namibia easily
defeated them by seven wickets with 32 balls remaining at the Wanderers Cricket
Ground in Windhoek. The top two teams in this competition advance to the T20
World Cup in 2024, so performances here are very important.
Zimbabwe was selected to bat first and found
themselves down 18 for 3 before captain Sikandar Raza and Craig Ervine put on
55 for the fourth wicket. However, in the fifteenth over, Zimbabwe found
themselves at 99 for 6, having fallen within six runs of each other. Even
reaching 132 required a lot of effort because Namibia’s left-arm seamers
Tangeni Lungameni and JJ Smit shared five wickets apiece.
“When you ask what went wrong, as far as I am
concerned, we got everything wrong,” Houghton said. “We were awful
today, embarrassingly bad. It’s probably one of the worst games that I have
ever been associated with in a Zimbabwean jersey.
“Why it happens, I have absolutely no idea. We
train hard, we train with specifics. The guys worked really hard, they had
enough energy coming into this game, but we batted poorly and followed that up
by bowling poorly and our fielding was average.”
“When you are not playing particularly well and
when you have lost a little bit of confidence as we have, we see demons in the
wicket when we bat, but when we bowl there are no demons in the wicket,”
Houghton said. “So, I looked at that wicket and it looks a good batting
strip and I would have thought we would score 170-180 comfortably.
“We gave a lot of wickets away, we were not
batting positively, we are batting recklessly at the moment. I thought it was
really a good batting wicket and they proved it when they chased.”