Is Zim cricket really ready to compete at the highest level, or are we just ignoring the massive elephant in the room?
With big tours from India (T20Is in July) and Australia (ODIs in September) on the horizon, the timing couldn't be more critical.
In T20 cricket, batting follows a simple structure: openers set the foundation, middle order maintains momentum, and finishers take us over the line or post a winning total.
Our openers: Bennett, Marumani, Taylor/Myers.
Middle order: Raza and Burl.
Finishers: Tashinga and Tony (even Brad Evans, some may say).
My fear is our finishers leave us heavily exposed. Their strike rates (108.84 and 128.57) are too low — even our openers can better them. This leaves us short on runs and often unable to post winning totals.
Raza and Burl usually rescue the innings if the young openers fail, or consolidate if they set a platform. But now they're also forced to provide the late surge — that's too much heavy lifting. If they get out in the 15th over, the innings effectively dies because the remaining finishers' strike rates aren't good enough (108-128).
In this modern age of T20, if our finishers have strike rates that even our openers outperform, should we start thinking about a squad shake-up... or just trust the process?