Chennai, February 26 Zimbabwe captain Sikandar Raza admitted that his bowlers had failed to execute their defensive plans, which led to them suffering a 72-run loss to India in the Super Eights clash at the MA Chidambaram Stadium on Thursday. Zimbabwe lacked discipline with the ball as India managed to score 256/4.
"Certainly, I think we could have executed our defensive play slightly better. I think we ended up attacking aggressively, and unfortunately, there was a lot of inconsistency when we were bowling from all the bowlers, and they managed to score a lot of runs.
"Once the game gets like that, it's hard to change it. So I thought, if one thing I would say is, I think we could have executed our defensive plans better. That would have given us a better chance to restrict them to maybe 210 or 220," said Raza in the post-match presentation ceremony.
India's batsmen had capitalized on this inconsistent bowling throughout their innings. Abhishek Sharma scored 55 off 30 balls, Hardik Pandya scored an unbeaten 50 off 23, and Tilak Varma scored 44 off just 16 deliveries, as India posted the second-highest total in T20 World Cup history, with a record 17 sixes.
Zimbabwe's reply, anchored by Brian Bennett's defiant unbeaten 97, reached 184/6 - a respectable score given the circumstances, but never threatening to complete the chase. "I'm a guy who looked for positives. I think the positive from today is that in the previous game, we scored 250, and I felt there was some panic and rush in our batting.
"I always say that you cannot win the game in the first six overs, but you certainly can lose it if you're chasing a big total. Today, I thought we were more composed in the first six overs. We were also trying to create opportunities. I thought the way the boys batted compared to the previous game was certainly something to take positives from, and that's what I'll do," added Raza.
Asked about his overall assessment of his team's performance, now that they have been eliminated from the semi-final contention, Raza said, "Yes, batting was there, but I think bowling and fielding, no, I think we could have done better there as well. I think, as I said, the previous game sort of taught us how to approach a game when you're chasing a big total. So certainly I saw that today. Listen, we are also a work in progress.
"A lot of youngsters, most of them are playing their first World Cup, and it's their first time in India. Not that I want to use that as an excuse, but certainly the lessons from the previous game, from a batting point of view, I thought we learned them well. You can see how quickly these boys are willing to improve, and they showed up today."
Eliminated from the competition, Zimbabwe will now face South Africa in their final Super Eight fixture at the Arun Jaitley Stadium in New Delhi on Sunday afternoon, with only pride to play for. Raza said he sees it as an opportunity to finally bring all three departments together in the manner his team managed during the qualifying stages, and he left no doubt about the standards he would demand from them.
"Certainly, the result will take care of itself, but what I'm looking for is definitely a better performance in fielding and bowling. Hopefully, we can carry on with our batting performance, and it should just keep getting better. So if we can match those three as we did in the qualifying stages, we give ourselves the best chance to win.
"At the World Cup against the best teams, you need all three departments to be working hard. Unfortunately, if one lacks, then the game runs away from you. So hopefully in the last game, we leave everything on the park, and we try and sort out all our three departments, and hopefully that gives us the best chance to win the game."
