[Match Thread] Zimbabwe v Netherlands, 3rd ODI, Harare, 25 Mar 2023

[secretzimbo]

Great atmosphere at the ground today. Saw a few familiar faces i haven’t seen around for a long time too which is encouraging

[Kriterion_BD]

Solid hard fought series win. A series loss would have raised a lot of questions and erased all the gains from 2022. Still some work to be done before the Qualifiers but at least business was taken care of.

Looks like Wes has finally gotten some semblance of form going after a long while. Next step is to carry on from attractive 40s and 50s to make bigger scores.

[Donald]

Zimbabwe middle order looks mighty fine at the moment with williams raza and ballance snd madande.
Burl is the only player apart from Chatara who hasnt enhanced his reputation this series.

[Donald]

Gotta feel for Holland. Ahmad and dutt look like great players in the future. The scrapping of the super league will be a disaster for these sides.

[mnelson68]

Well done lads, excellent win.

This needs to be our batting template going forward

Well hold on Some people on this Forum are demanding for Kaia to confuse the lineup..

As I've been saying don't need to play a spinner in this line up , Kaia can then play

[jaybro]

Great result for the boys and good to see them actually win a game in a canter without my heart rate going through the roof

My thoughts coming out of the game -

- Good captaincy by Ervine to identify early that spin was the way to go and he didn’t waste time getting the spinners on. Also he kept them on and didn’t try to bring back the seamers too early like he’s done many times before.

- Not a good day for my argument that the part time spinners can’t be relied on, they were superb especially Williams & Raza. I did feel bad for Mavuta though, his first 4-overs were good & he should have had both Musa & Ackerman out.

- Madande’s keeping is definitely an issue, you can’t drop two sitters like that in consecutive games. Unfortunately I think he’s a confidence player & after the all confidence he would have gotten from those two half centuries, I hope he hasn’t lost it from those two drops. The good thing is catching sitters is surely an easy issue to fix.

- Ervine & Madhevere have now had two very good opening partnerships, although they both threw it away too early. Really need one of them to go on and make a century.

- Ballance at 3 & Williams at 4 is perfect for the batting lineup, I really hope they stick with this lineup. Ballance showed he can play that anchor role we really need from him & Williams is just class, seems so reliable these days.

- The approach to this innings was the best from all 3 matches, not sure if the pressure of trying to set a target gets to them, but the way they approached this chase had them set up for a 300+ score. They need to take threat approach into all batting innings.

- Another series win, the team seems to be making a habit of that which is great, I remember them going years without a series win in the post Butcher years before Streak took over.

[Jemisi]

Yeah, I appreciated the low stress chase. It was a nice evening watching all the batsmen contribute for once

[zimbos_05]

So good to finally see the top order deliver. Now they need to be consistent with it. Would be nice if one of them pushed on to a hundred.

Often we see them get past 50 and then get out.

[TapsC2]

The atmosphere yesterday was incredible. Was kind of hoping to see a more competitive game. The general population is buying into cricket big time.

[Googly]

A fair amount of the crowd are there to enjoy the singing, dancing and drinking, I don't think the result is that important