The Sunday Mail
Tinashe Kusema
CHEVRONS head coach Heath Streak will send out an unchanged said when the Zimbabwe national men’s cricket team returns to Harare Sports Club for the second and final Test against Sri Lanka this morning. Zimbabwe trail their Asian counterparts 1-0 following last week’s 225-run loss.“Look, I am not a big fan of making changes just for the sake of making changes. If we do make any changes, it will strictly be for tactical reasons; and that will depend on how the wicket looks on the morning of the Test,” said Streak.
Streak wants his charges to build on the positives picked up from the first game.
“While we are disappointed that we did not come out of the first Test with at draw, there were many positives that we took from the team’s performance,” he said. “The trick now will be to work on the weakness and improve on the strengths.
“Prior to the first Test, the main target was to last the full five-days. We did that and actually came close to forcing a draw. Now, just being competitive is no longer good enough; we want to win the game,” he said.
Streak’s sentiment were echoed by captain Graeme Cremer, who believes that team that walked onto the park for the first Test has what it takes to force a series draw.
“The team has what it takes to win games; we have competent batsmen and very good bowlers. We lost wickets at crucial times in the game, the top order didn’t really come to the party and we dropped plenty of catches. “When you look back at the game, these things were the biggest difference between the result we wanted and the result we got. “We have spoken, at length, about these things as a team and everybody seems to be on the same page as to what we want to achieve in the second test,” he said.
Streak, Cremer, convener of selectors Tatenda Taibu, and bowling and batting coaches Makhaya Ntini and Lance Klusener were scheduled to meet after the team’s final practice session yesterday to finalise their game plan for today.
