The West Indies batsmen made merry on the smaller Wankhede Stadium as Shimron Hetmyer and his mates took the Zimbabwe bowlers to the cleaners, amassing 254 in 20 overs.
The African side was coming from the more sluggish pitches and bigger fields in Sri Lanka, where scores were relatively lower. Fielding lapses didn’t help their cause, but the conditions at the batting paradise in Mumbai were not to their liking. Even though the muscular Caribbean batsmen didn’t middle all of their big hits, they often found the stands as 60m shots were often enough for maximums.
The pitch at Chennai’s MA Chidambaram Stadium is also expected to be batting-friendly, but the Zimbabwe team management is hoping that the bigger playing surface may give them a chance.
“Certainly, I think, you know, from a boundary size point of view, I think it was probably one of the biggest differences,” Zimbabwe head coach Justin Sammons was quoted as saying by The Herald newspaper. “I think a lot of those mishits will go for six at the smaller fields but they would be out at the bigger ones like we had in Sri Lanka.”
He pointed out that Zimbabwe were better suited and more used to playing on bigger grounds, but they need to adjust to different conditions.
“For Zimbabwe, a lot of the cricket, over the last couple of years, has been played in Harare and Harare Sports Club is a really big, big ground,” Sammons said. “So, again, it’s good learning at the end of the day, and we take those lessons and we move on.”
For once, India and Zimbabwe find themselves in a similar situation after heavy defeats in their respective Super Eights encounters, but the co-hosts would nevertheless go into the match at Chepauk as heavy favourites.
“India are the number one team in the world and we know it’s going to be an extremely difficult challenge,” said Sammons. “However, we are certainly going to give it our all and we are not going to leave anything out there on the park.
“You can’t control the results when you are playing against top quality teams like India, but we are certainly going to give it our best. The morale in the team is still very good, excellent, the guys are enjoying each other, sharing each other’s success and failures.”
The coach believes it’s still not the time to be thinking too much about net run rates, and continuing to do what has brought the team to the Super Eights after wins over former champions Australia and Sri Lanka.
“If we are chasing a big score or we feel a big score is needed, we don’t actually need to change our process,” Sammons said. “We can still stay true to our process and get the job done at the same time.”
