Tendai Chatara and Sikandar Raza of Zimbabwe took three wickets each to defend the lowest total ever against India and take a 1-0 lead in the opening of five T20Is at Harare Sports Club on Saturday.
Earlier, Ravi Bishnoi’s four wickets restricted Zimbabwe to 115/9 after Indian captain Shubman Gill won the toss and chose to bowl first on a drier field.
India, led by Shubman Gill, will play the next T20I on Sunday at 4:30 PM.
India needs 16 runs to win in the final over and Chatara has taken the ball for Zimbabwe here. It is going to be difficult as the softball has been harder to hit. It might be wise for him to try and play behind the wicket and square of the wicket.
Sundar tried to hoik a pull shot on the leg-side to get the top edge and Muzrambani took a calm catch under pressure to close things out for Zimbabwe. That was an excellent final over by Chatara under pressure Sundar though kept his calm did not have the power in the end to close out the game for India. Who would have thought the World Champions got unstuck by Zimbabwe in this opening encounter still five games to go but it is a wake-up call for India.
Just wanted to play throughout the innings, tried to get as many as we could. Tried to protect my partner, ended up getting 115 which was okay on this wicket. Told him (Chatara) simple things, I tried to let him play just 2 balls in an over. We told the boys to give it our all and to give our 100% no matter what.
We bowled pretty well, we let ourselves down in the field. We were not up to standard and everyone looked a bit rusty. We spoke about taking time and enjoying our batting but it didn’t pan out that way. Halfway through we had lost 5 wickets, would’ve been best for us if I stayed there till the end, very disappointed with the way I got out and the rest of the match panned out. There was a bit of hope for us but when you’re chasing 115 and your no.10 batter is out there, you know something is wrong.
Player of the Match and Zimbabwe Captain:
Feel really happy about the win. Need to take one game at a time. The job is not done, series is not over. World champions play like world champions so we need to be ready for the next game. This isn’t a wicket where you get bowled out for 115. Credit to the bowlers of both sides. Clearly an indication we need to up our skills. I said I don’t care about the result as long as we could be true to the crowd and changing room, we had our plans, we stuck to it and we backed our guys. Our catching and ground fielding was amazing but we did make some errors, shows there’s room for improvement. We knew the fans would lift us up and give us energy, credit to them, it helped us.
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