Zimbabwe would be desperately disappointed after their consecutive losses to Ireland and Bangladesh.
The gapping question is whether there was anything to get excited about in the first place. What goes without saying is that these practice matches surely have the coaches both worried and frustrated and the players confidence will also have taken a knock leading up to their crucial opening match against the hosts Sri Lanka at 4pm local time tommorow afternoon.
One could possibly be a little understanding and sympathetic to the fact that Zimbabwe played their first match approximately 24 hours after their arrival in Sri Lanka. Ireland on the other hand had already spent a week in Colombo and were fully rested. In all fairness, the Zimbabwean players would still have been suffering from the affects of jetlag as well as having to suddenly acclimatised to the sweltering weather conditions. There are yet critics out there who would say that this sounds like another one of many excuses and that the time has come for the team to stand up and be counted on a regular base. The fact is, that it is extremely hard to be at your best after spending a considerable time in airports and aircrafts and then having to play a game the very next day.
Nevertheless, both warm up matches were disappointing with only Hamilton Masakadza and Vusi Sibanda showing any real sign of form with Masakadza making 44 against Ireland and Sibanda 40 against Bangladesh.
Other than that, none of the top or middle order scored runs of substance. The bowling has also been poorly.
If we cast our mind back to the T20 world cup that was played in the West Indies two years ago, everybody was in high spirits and confident that Zimbabwe would cause an upset after beating both Australia and Pakistan in two warm up matches before being badly beaten by New Zealand and Sri Lanka in the group stages, which may very well make those who are superstitious believe that Zimbabwe will go on to beat either Sri Lanka or South Africa, or both teams for that matter and qualify for the super eights!
In all seriousness, can Zimbabwe recover in such a short space of time and cause an upset by beating one of these cricketing legends?
The answer to that would be that it is unlikely but most definetly not impossible. But in order to beat a team like Sri Lanka or South Africa it would need a complete team effort.
A problem that has become a real and genuine concern is that Zimbabwe's batting order has become top heavy as they rely too much on the top three to make runs while the middle order continues to be a worry as batsman after batsman get in but don't go on to make scores of any significance.
Even when Zimbabwe won the Pran RFL T20 triangular series, it was thanks in the main to Vusi Sibanda, Brendan Taylor and the close to super human performances from Hamilton Masakadza which put runs on the board which in turn was backed up by some steady bowling and very good fielding.
None of these ingredients which go towards producing positive results have been evident in the warm up matches.
But the beauty or perhaps frustration about the team is that it is a very unpredictable team and even though Sri Lanka and South Africa are blessed with an abundance of talent, Zimbabwe are more than capable of springing a surprise in the game's most unpredictable version.
