I am a very big Mark Vermeulen fan and always want to see him in every Zimbabwean national side. But to be honest, he is short of runs recently. There is no question of his ability and potential but I reckon the space of about five years from international cricket has done quite a lot damage to his progress as an international batsman. It was good to see him catching the ball and fielding well but I would be very happy if he would have done so with the bat. Yet there is a lot of time and opportunity. I want him to play more and more domestic matches and work on his technique more and score more and more runs.betterdays wrote:not too much problem with your changes (personally I'd have Vermulean over Williams) except that you've now taken out two of our best three bowlers; Utseya and Cremer!?
Blignaut, who is a bowling allrounder imo, in at 6 is too early i'd say but that's flexible...
I had left Matsikenyeri out mainly becasue I don't think he performs often enough...not that many of the batsmen do but i just feel his contributions are so few and far between...still, i wouldn't quibble. We're still short on batting...
To be fair, I'm also not a big supporter of Stuart Matsikenyeri. But he always seems to do well in domestic matches and especially his contribution (batting) against South Africa in their fast and bouncy wicket forced me to include him in the lineup. I noticed that he has improved quite a lot in his batting and technique.
For Blignaut, I rate him very highly as an allrounder. I have the guts in him that he can easily bat at no 6 in ODIs to take the attack and press the accelerator. The videocon cup (Zim-Ind-Nz) which was played in Aug-Sep 2005 is ever fresh in my mind. In that series Coventry and Blignaut batted respectively at no 5 and 6 and provided an aggressive batting staff and I enjoyed that very much. From then I would like to see Coventry at 5 and Blignaut at 6. He also have a good batting stats averaging 26 with 6 50's in tests, 27 in FC cricket. I just hope that he immidiately returns and perform.
Graeme Cremer is a very good leg spinner and has been successful for Zimbabwe this year but I mostly opted for a pace bowling side. If anybody fails then he is certainly there to replace him.
But as previously said, this will happen if Blignaut and Ireland return.