da dobrowin： The West Indies’ arrival in Zimbabwe last week was completelyovershadowed by the hype surrounding the second Test between Zimbabweand India that started at Harare Sports Club the following day
da heads bet： Larry Moyo20-Jun-2001The West Indies’ arrival in Zimbabwe last week was completelyovershadowed by the hype surrounding the second Test between Zimbabweand India that started at Harare Sports Club the following day.The West Indies are in Zimbabwe for their first-ever tour sinceZimbabwe attained Test status in 1992 and it will be only their secondTest series after Zimbabwe’s tour of West Indies in March last year.West Indies won the series with a two-nil whitewash. This time too,West Indies are playing two Tests.West Indies manager Ricky Skerritt said that they were looking forwardto a competitive series against Zimbabwe. “We expect it to be a tightseries. Zimbabwe is a very competitive team and they have been doingvery well at home. We have a young team so it will be good experiencefor us and we are looking forward to it.”The triangular one-day series is also going to be very tough. Indiais one the highly rated one-day teams and we have not had a very goodrecord in one-day cricket of late. Zimbabwe is known to be a verycompetitive one-day team and this leaves us as underdogs. So for us toget into the final will be a great achievement.”We lost more games than we won in the last one-day series. InAustralia we got into the final but we struggled to do that. We beatZimbabwe but again it was not easy. We then had a home series againstSouth Africa and again we did not do well. They beat us 5-2 in theseven-match one day series after we won the first match.”But it was valuable experience for us. We have a lot of young playerswho have not had a lot of one-day matches. Our bowling attack is theworst affected as it is very inexperienced. And for the guys to handlepressure against sides like India and Zimbabwe will be a very goodtest.”Zimbabwe’s Test record has not been that impressive. They are, afterBangladesh, the newest Test-playing nation and the victory over Indiaon Monday was a very good win. They have had a very good run at homethis season. They are getting better, producing more players, andproducing a more competitive Test team. We are going through arebuilding phase and they have just come out with a very good winagainst India in the last Test and our series against Zimbabwe will bevery competitive.”I wouldn’t want to single out any players for special mention.Obviously the more senior players have established themselves, thecaptain and the Flower brothers. Zimbabwe has a well-balanced team,improving all the time so we will take them as a team and not asindividuals.”Captain Carl Hooper also spoke about the series against Zimbabwe.”It’s going to be a very good series with Zimbabwe playing some goodcricket at the moment. They have just beaten India in the Test to drawthe series. The tri-series will be close too and I think Zimbabwe area very good one day-side as well as India. We expect to give a goodaccount of ourselves.”The series against South Africa was a good one for us. They (SouthAfrica) are second only to Australia in the world. We are rebuildingthe side and we don’t feel under any pressure at all to win here inZimbabwe. We have a young side and it will take a while for them tocome through.”We are here to play Zimbabwe as a team and we are not going to singleout any individual players for special attention. We are just going toplay some good cricket over the next couple of weeks.”
