Windies come up short as Zimbabwe take T20 trophy
02/03/10
West Indies failed to come to grips with the Zimbabwe spinners and lost the one-off Digicel T20 International by 26 runs at the Queen’s Park Oval on Sunday evening.
After deciding to bat first Zimbabwe were bowled out 105 off 19.5 overs, with Darren Sammy (5-26) and Sulieman Benn (4-6) recording the third best and fourth best bowling figures in T20 International history. Accurate and attacking, Benn took a wicket with the first ball of the match and gave the batsmen few scoring opportunities. The previous best figures for the West Indies came from Lendl Simmons, who took 4-19 against Sri Lanka in the ICC T20 World Championship in England last year. Sammy was also on the ball from the start and got into the act by finishing off the innings with the first five-wicket haul by a West Indian.
However the match was turned on its head as Zimbabwe used spin for 18 of the 20 overs. The Windies batsmen failed to come to grips and limped to 79-7 from their 20 overs. Captain Denesh Ramdin’s 23 not out from 36 balls was the best score, while Shiv Chanderpaul made 20 from 30 balls on his return to international cricket.
Run scoring was difficult and leg-spinner Graeme Cremer took 3-11 from his four overs to win the Man-of-the-Match award. Greg Lamb ended 2-14 from his four overs while skipper Prosper Utseya and veteran left-armer Ray Price were excellent at the start of the innings.
After accepting the winners’ trophy, Utseya said he was thrilled with the result: “We played really well today and we deserve to be winners. Everyone made a contribution and I’m happy for us as a team. All the bowlers performed for us today and did exactly what was required.”
Ramdin was disappointed with the result but promised the Windies will bounce back in the upcoming matches. “Today things did not work out and we have only ourselves to blame. The bowlers did a great job at the start of the match but we came up short with the bat.”
The Digicel Series now moves to Guyana for the start of the One-Dayers. The first and second Digicel ODIs at the Guyana National Stadium (Thursday March 4; Saturday March 6). The series then moves to St Vincent for three Digicel ODIs at the Arnos Vale Playing Field (Wednesday March 10; Friday March 12; Sunday March 14).
