Second ODI

[CrimsonAvenger]

Indeed there is great camaraderie between the Indian and the Afghan boards. But yes, IPL bidding is upto the talent and they are getting noticed no doubt. BCCI also suggested ACB to take Lalchand Rajput as their head coach. This guy is pretty shrewd in his cricketing acumen and pretty much on the lines of Haturusingha. Another masterstroke there for the ACB after which they have invested well on Simmons. It is clear how intelligently they are investing on long term success. Quite a few established countries like SL, WI and BD too have a lot to learn from their methodical approach towards building a strong structure (Notice that I did not mention Zim there, its not going to happen).

But another painful point there: Zim held that BCCI's no.1 friend spot from say late 90's to mid 2000s. Lot of bilateral series home and away, 5 match ODI series going to the wire and people thronging the stadiums for the Ind-Zim matches. SL took that spot later, and now I won't be surprised if Afg claims that space in 5 years time.

[CrimsonAvenger]

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These two tweets tell the story. This is where we stand. The latter, Raees Ahmadzai was the coach of Afg A last month, and if you guys remember him from our earlier brush-ups with Afghans, when we played them in the intercontinental cup in 2009, he was part of the Afghan squad and we got updates of the match going on through his tweets. For him to be expressing such sadness, well... this is pretty much it.

[jaybro]

I think the main reason Tahir wasn't selected was due to him being Pakistani?

[Kriterion_BD]

From whatever minimal stuff I watched live, it looked like all the players were meandering along with no energy, aim or purpose - right from the beginning of the match! It is a disgusting sight to be honest, there appears to be no pride or purpose for most in the team. Only exception was young Tarisai Musakanda, whose youth and exuberance was there to be seen. Will it stay that way for him after 10-15 matches? Who knows? Other than him, may be some parts of Moor and Raza (in the last match of course) were a bit better. In fact, Raza's exuberance has gone down quite a bit in recent days. We won't win matches against anyone in this mindset and approach.

My observation as well. Some more observations:

That Afghanistan has beaten 8-4 in the past 3 series so far indicates that they are significantly ahead of Zim, at the moment. Whats more, Afghanistan have given ZIM an chance in all of those 12 games, even when they have won by comfortable margins. This indicates that both AFG and ZIM are making critical errors in every game. The difference is that Afghanistan is either making adjustments at the appropriate time, or avoiding the catastrophic mistakes that Zimbabwe refuse to eschew.

If you go back to the very first series between the 2, AFG has now won 10 of the last 14 ODIs between the two sides which is pretty total domination.

The Zimbabwe players are lacking on fronts which makes the problem seem to not have any quick solution in site:

- fitness...Panyangara (general), Williams (constantly), Hamilton (general) continue to suffer from injuries and poor fitness...why? they aren't playing domestic cricket, so how does Willy keep getting injured?
- coaching...Mangongo, Whatmore, Ntini, Streak...bad, fair, and good coaches but the results stay the same...problem is not here but is there an analyst and is he telling the players where they keep going wrong?
- situational awareness...Burl's wicket in the first ODI, critical run outs due to not grounding the bat, etc...these aren't skills issues not the bat grounding anyway...