ZIMBABWE Women’s cricket team took a 2-1 lead in the ongoing T20 series with a three-wicket win against the visiting South Africa Emerging side at Harare Sports Club while their male counterparts, the Chevrons got a massive hiding in a seven-wicket defeat against hosts Namibia in their first match of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup Qualifier Africa in Windhoek.
The Lady Chevrons’ overhauled SA Emerging Women’s total of 105/9 in their allotted 20 overs scoring 109/7 with nine balls remaining to give left arm seamer Nomvelo Sibanda who turned 27 on Tuesday a perfect birthday present.
Sibanda picked one wicket for 14 runs in three overs, but the afternoon belonged to fellow medium pacer, Loreen Tshuma who picked player-of-the-match bowling figures of 4/21 from four overs. Lady Chevrons’ vice-captain, Josephine Nkomo picked two wickets while Kelis Ndhlovu and Lindokuhle Mabhero claimed a scalp each.
Ashley Ndiraya top scored for the Lady Chevrons with 34 runs before being run out by Jenna Evans while opener Ndhlovu weighed in with 23 runs. Tshuma and Sibanda were unbeaten on 24 and seven runs respectively.
The magic moment of the match, however, came from SA Emerging’s Leah Jones who picked a hattrick in the 12th over. Jones, the medium pacer, claimed the wickets of Ndhlovu, Nkomo and Nyasha Gwanzura in her last three deliveries of the over.
Lady Chevrons head coach, Gary Brent was happy with the way the girls fought in the match.
“SA are a strong side, they have got quality, they have got a number of national players in this side. This is great for us, it bodes well when we are playing tougher opposition. We are gaining a lot by playing these games,” Brent told NewsDay Sport.
“Winning is a habit, exactly that but the results are not really something that we are focusing on, we are focusing on just trying to make sure that we are trying to execute the plans that we have put forward which have made us successful in the past and we are putting in a few different combinations together. So, there’s a lot of moving parts in what we are trying to do, it’s part of our training camp. It’s more of us playing under pressure against a good opposition and trying to nail our processes in doing that.
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“Nomvelo is a huge part of our side, and we wish her a very best and a happy birthday and everyone has been wishing her well.”
In Windhoek, the Chevrons struggled to manoeuvre their processes with the bat totalling 132/8 after batting first. Craig Ervine scored 36 runs from 33 balls, Ryan Burl 27 not out while captain Sikandar Raza managed 20 runs from 21 balls.
Namibia easily chased down the target scoring 134/3 in 14.4 overs buoyed
by openers, Niko Davin who smashed 89 from 45 balls and Michael van Lingen’s 20-ball 30 runs. Davin scored over 200 runs in the pre-tournament series against Zimbabwe three weeks ago and took off from where he left. Richard Ngarava bowled well for the Chevrons taking one wicket for 20 runs in his four-over spell. The Chevrons play their second match of the campaign against Tanzania this afternoon.
Raza was gutted with the result.
“I still believe in this group of boys, I know we have done ourselves a disservice and the way we bowled in the first six overs of powerplay, we knew it was going to be difficult to plug our way back,” he said.
“Even though we have lost the game credit to Niko on the way he batted he has done that against us before, we had a plan for him but unfortunately it just didn’t come out right. Hopefully, we will bounce back stronger, we didn’t want to have one bad game, we wanted to win all our games, Namibia beat us, and we don't want to lose another game.”
