|
‘Gayle Power’ crushes the substandard
Zimbabweans |
May 11, 2006 (Click to see the
Scorecard)
 Chris
Gayle and Sewnarine Chattergoon played
strokefilled innings under the lights to take
West Indies to a 10-wicket win over Zimbabwe in
the 5th ODI at Gros Islet in St.Lucia. Zimbabwe
played substandard cricket right from the first
ball and never really looked to compete in this
match. Although West Indies bowling continued to
disappoint, the two opening batsmen Chris Gayle
and Chattergoon made up for it with their
cracking shots and sheer domination over the
bowling. Chris Gayle has found good form ahead
of the India Series and he has come back to his
attacking best in this knock of 95, which had
come off just 91 balls with the help of 13 fours
and a six. Chattergoon showed his class
especially off the backfoot crashing the short
and wides ones to the boundaries. Zimbabwe’s
performance looks to be deteriorating with every
game that they are playing and the quality of
cricket has unfortunately been very low.
Zimbabwe won the toss and elected to bat first
in what was the first ever day night ODI in the
Caribbean and there were enough doubts whether
the match would go on till the floodlights are
switched on. This was because Zimbabwe were
batting miserably with its batsmen showing poor
technique that can be compared to lower grade
club cricketers. But they batted for almost 50
overs to score 152 and that is an indication of
how the West Indies team has lacked the genuine
fire power in its bowling to bundle out a weak
opposition for less than 100. Jerome Taylor,
Corey Collymore and Dwayne Bravo were all medium
pace and were in no way looking to blast the
opposition out. Bravo was slightly impressive as
he was getting some sort of deviation with his
offcutters. Chris Gayle and debutant Dave
Mohammed were just average but got away against
a batting line up that was keen on blocking most
of the deliveries. Zimbabwe had lost an early
wicket as usual with Pete Rinkie giving catching
practice to the West Indies Skipper at 2nd slip
of an ordinary away swinger bowled outside the
offstump by Jerome Taylor. Since then Terrence
Duffin and Brendan Taylor decided to have net
practice in the middle and in particular
Mr.Duffin displayed one of the all time boring
innings in the history of One Day Cricket and at
one stage was batting brilliantly on 13 after
facing just 55 balls. Gregory Strydom batted
with some positive intent striking the ball hard
and clean and a couple of times out of the
ground for the maximum. Poor Strydom got the ire
of his captain and ofcourse it was the mistake
of the former in running out his captain Duffin.
But what Strydom had done gave everyone a relief
from a Tortoise paced innings from the
Zimbabwean Skipper Terrence Duffin scoring 38
runs after facing 107 balls and the Skipper had
faced more than 80 dot balls. One should pity
for the crowd that had turned out to watch the
first ever day night ODI in the Caribbean.
Dave Mohammed, the debutant picked up three
wickets with two of them coming through his
googlies. His first wicket was that of Sibanda,
who couldn’t even pick up a straightforward
change of action from the chinaman bowler who
bowled one from the back of his hand and the
batsman couldn’t even think that the ball would
turn away from him. Sibanda played for the ball
to turn into him and as it was the googly of the
chinaman bowler, it turned away to kiss the
offstump. The 2nd wicket that Dave Mohammed got
was a complete joke – it was a rank long hop
outside the offstump for which Keith Dabengwa
went too back in his crease and played a
terrific square cut with the bat hitting his
stumps rather than the ball which was far away
from him quiet a distance. Dave Mohammed got his
third wicket through some great thinking
pitching his wrong one on the legstump of
Mahwire and the poor tailender, who played for
the ball to turn in was bowled as the ball
turned away. The chinaman bowler ended up with 3
for 37 in his 10 overs but had it been a
different opposition, he would have been
hammered for plenty of runs. He was very short
and flat on most occasions and got away with it
as the Zimbabwean batsmen weren’t watching the
ball come out his hand properly!
The West Indies had made four changes in this
match bringing in the ‘Gayle Power’, Dwayne
Bravo, Jerome Taylor and of course debutant Dave
Mohammad for Shiv Chanderpaul, Dwayne Smith,
Fidel Edwards and Tino Best. Zimbabwe had lost
yet another player in its limited pool of
resources and it was the turn of Ed Rainsford, a
decent medium pacer, who packed his bags to head
for England to play Club Cricket ahead of
playing One Day Internationals for his country.
Chris Gayle got the Man of the Match award in
this game and he did play some spanking shots
that made a cracking sound and he and his
batting did glitter under the lights and gave
some joy for the crowd.
Top of the Page |
