Zimbabwe captain Elton Chigum-bura lashed out at his careless batsmen for throwing their wickets after losing to hosts Bangladesh by six wickets in the second of the five-match ODI series at the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium on Friday.
They were bundled out for a modest 191 runs in 46.2 overs as the spinners of Bangladesh always kept them under pressure during the innings, grabbing nine of their wickets.
‘I would say this wicket was much better than that of the first match but we just threw our wickets away and failed to apply ourselves the way we wanted to and kept losing wickets in regular intervals. So, it’s not about the wicket…it’s about how we went about in our batting,’ Chigumbura lamented.
Zimbabwe batsmen never looked comfortable against the four spinners of Bangladesh, even though six of their batsmen made double figures but failed to convert them into a big score.
‘I would blame our batsmen for losing the game and Bangladesh bowled well. When you take wickets, you are on top and after
about 15 overs we were always under pressure and kept losing wickets,’ said the skipper.
Chigumbura, however, was optimistic about his bowling side, even though, Bangladeshi batsmen reached their target quite comfortably with more than 10 overs to spare.
‘It is always difficult to defend a low score on a wicket which was playing better than the first, but I still believe in our bowling department because they are consistent, it’s just that they didn’t have enough runs on the board to defend,’ Chigumbura said.
Chigumbura also believes that the nine wickets which Abdur Razzak claimed in the two matches, it’s more because his batsmen are failing to apply themselves.
‘I think it’s application, we are throwing our wickets away and some of the wickets he [Razzak] is getting shouldn’t be getting because we are not playing smart cricket from our batting point of view,’ Chigumbura added.
