Windies lose by only 2 runs

This was one last thing that the West Indies would have wanted to happen when they lost the first match of the 5 match one day series to Zimbabwe at Guyana by 2 runs. This should be no surprise for anyone keeping in mind the caliber of the present West Indies team which can least beat any non test playing nation alone. Chris Gayle must be glad that his team lost only by two runs when predictions had their say that West Indies would lose the game by a mile. In a way, West Indies would have silenced all critics pointing towards them.

The only bowler from the West Indies side who had some sort of success comparatively was Suliemann Benn when he returned with 4 overs maiden with only Miller being able to bowl another over maiden for the entire West Indies team. Though Kieron Pollard was successful in terms of number of wickets bagged, he gave away 59 runs from his ten overs at 5.9 an over which was more than the 5.08 an over that the entire Zimbabwean innings could manage. It was a team combination from the Zimbabwean side with 5 of the 7 Zimbabwean batsmen putting up decent individual scores.

However, this was not the way the West Indian innings started when the top three batsmen in terms of order of making it to the crease saw posting individual scores above 50. However, it was the same old batsmen in Chris Gayle and Shivnarine Chanderapaul who made the job easy for the West Indies team so the the batsmen making it to the crease later in the innings can cash in on the same which didn't really happen. It was a tough task to pick the best from the Zimbabwean bowlers where a bowler who returns with 3 wickets gives away runs at the rate of 12 an over.

And the next best bowler in terms of wickets namely Greg Lamb returns with figures of 6.40 in the 5 overs he bowled. However, irrespective of who gave away how many runs and how many wickets fell, the end result declared Zimbabwe as winners by a margin a 2 runs. After the exit of the top 3 batsmen namely Gayle, Chandrapaul and Adrian Barath there were just 2 scored above 10 with none of them being able to score more than 20. Instead extras had its share of 22 runs which makes it the 4th among top run scorers for the West Indies in the match.