Zimbabwe will look to exploit home conditions against India
With Zimbabwe experiencing winter now, the home pacers might make use of their familiarity with the pitch to trouble Indian batters.
NEW DELHI: Having hurt the Shubman Gill-led India hard in the opening T20I in Harare, Zimbabwe spinner Wellington Masakadza said the tourists should take the home side lightly at their own risk, and added that they will exploit the home conditions to the maximum to win the five-match series.
A new-look India team suffered a 13-run loss to an inexperienced yet spirited Zimbabwe side in an upset of massive proportion.
India, who were recently crowned champions in the T20 World Cup albeit with a different set of players, were expected to blow away the Zimbabwean challenge when they restricted the home side to 115 for nine.
But Zimbabwe wrote their own script, reducing India to 28 for four in the powerplay and then eventually bowling them out for 102 in 19.5 overs. It was India’s first loss in T20Is in 2024 and first against Zimbabwe in eight years.
Masakadza, who finished with figures of 1/15 in three overs, said, “We are trying to use our conditions as much as we can against this Indian side. It’s a second-string Indian side, but there are a lot of good players in there. So, we are looking forward to this series,” Masakadza said in an interview with PTI.
“We’ve had a few plans in place. We needed them to work and obviously,” he added.
Masakadza, who dismissed tail-ender Avesh Khan on Saturday, said he was eyeing captain Shubman Gill’s wicket now.
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