zimcricketnews.com

The Videocon Cup moves on to Harare tomorrow (Monday) for the third game in the series, as Zimbabwe take on India. Both teams have been comprehensively beaten (some would say humiliated) by New Zealand in the past week, so who is best placed to pick themselves up and pick up a victory in the process?

India’s poor travel arrangements certainly won’t have helped their preparations - they were left stranded in Bulawayo for longer than expected following problems with flight ticketing. On the field, while their bowling against New Zealand was good, their batting performance left a lot to be desired, something captain Sourav Ganguly is aware isn’t a recent problem:

“In the past Indian batsmen have scored a lot of big innings but that has not been the case over the last year. But we have addressed that and we are trying to find the answers.”

Those answers didn’t come against NZ, but most people will expect that Zimbabwe won’t cause quite the same problems.

Zimbabwe, meanwhile, will have taken note of any perceived weaknesses in India’s Bulawayo performance, but captain Tatenda Taibu is under no illusions that their own game against NZ was anything other than a disaster:

“We ourselves can’t do any worse than we did against New Zealand on Wednesday in Bulawayo. We were poor in all departments of the game, batting, bowling and fielding, especially the latter. There really is room for a lot of improvement and we have been very working very hard with Kevin Curran. I’m sure our failures won’t happen again when we meet India. It has been too early to judge the Indian batting, so we’ll simply take it on its merits.”

Taking inspiration from adversity, I think - but a lot of Zimbabwe’s problems seem to be mental, with players on the field often visibly lacking interest in the match that’s going on around them. Curran will have to spend as much time motivating his charges as he will working on technique if he’s to turn them into a competitive outfit - his stated aim of turning Zimbabwe into a force in world cricket seems a long way off.

Looking towards reaching the final, net run-rate figures mean India could make do with a draw, although they’ll no doubt be looking for a win to exorcise any demons left by their defeat by NZ. For Zimbabwe, nothing but a win will do - but on recent form you have to expect that India will do what’s required of them on the day.