(ESPNCRICINFO) – A career-best 72 from Innocent Kaia kept Zimbabwe’s hopes of making the Namibia tri-series final alive as they beat the hosts for the second time in the tournament. Zimbabwe now hold a slight edge over Namibia, having beaten them nine times in 17 meetings, including their last three matches.
After a last-ball thriller between the teams on Monday, Zimbabwe played like the more experienced side they are and had Namibia under pressure from the get-go. After putting Namibia in to bat, they made run-scoring difficult, took early wickets and despite an 83-run partnership between Gerhard Erasmus and Alexander Busing-Volschenk, limited them to a gettable score. Brad Evans’ 2 for 29 meant he joined Duan Jansen as the joint leading wicket-taker in the series with eight to his name.
While Zimbabwe’s bowling is routinely their strong suit, their batting has been prone to collapses in this series. Kaia shared fifty-plus stands with Brian Bennett and Sikandar Raza but the inevitable wobble came when they lost three wickets for eight runs in 11 balls. By then, Kaia had polished off most of the target and it was up to Ryan Burl and Tadiwanashe Marumani to finish off. They reached the target in the 19th over but their net run-rate remains negative.
The series’ best Powerplay
Run-scoring has come fairly easily early in the innings throughout this series but this time, with gusty conditions and a used pitch, things were vastly different in the first six overs. Zimbabwe’s attack made good on Sikandar Raza’s decision to put Namibia in and a combination of spin and seam up-front kept things quiet before the introduction of Evans provided a breakthrough. Evans pitched it back of a length, Louren Steenkamp tried to slice it over square leg and with the ball swirling, Wessly Madhevere took a well-judged catch. In the next over, Blessing Muzarabani had Jan Frylinck swinging across the line and caught at point. Kundai Matigimu was introduced in the final over of the Powerplay, found extra bounce and his first T20I wicket when he had Zane Green caught behind, Namibia were 26 for 3, the worst Powerplay score of the series, where the previous lowest total was 34 for 2.
Erasmus holds Namibia together
Namibia’s captain Erasmus has had a quiet series by his standards with scores of 19 and 12. But, when presented with the opportunity to fix that here, he took it. Erasmus had faced two balls by the time the Powerplay ended and had Busing-Volschenk at the other end. He was happy to let his younger partner play his shots. At the halfway stage, Erasmus was on 10 off 11 and only then did he hit his first boundary: a cut off his opposite number, Raza. Then, he sent Wellington Masakadza into the parking lot for his first six and overtook Busing-Volschenk. From there, Erasmus was in total control. He took a liking to Matigimu and hit boundaries off him on both sides of the wicket and reached fifty with a pull off Evans, off the 32nd ball he faced. When Busing-Volschenk was dismissed and their 83-run fourth-wicket stand ended, Erasmus had to usher Namibia to a strong finish. He went after anything short and was brutal off Evans’ last over and took 14 runs off it as Namibia set Zimbabwe 157.
