West Indies vs. Zimbabwe: Date, Live Stream, TV Info, Cricket World Cup Preview
The West Indies will be desperate to make it two wins in a row at the Cricket World Cup when they take on Zimbabwe in their upcoming contest.
After losing their opening game to Ireland in embarrassing fashion, the Windies responded in the best possible fashion to hammer Pakistan by 150 runs, turning in a performance bristling with composure, dynamism and some enthralling segments of play.
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The challenge facing this crop of players for a long time has been consistency, however. And while they’re the big favourites to triumph against their upcoming African opponents, you can never quite be sure of how things will go when it comes to the Caribbean islanders.
Here’s a detailed look at how both sides are shaping up ahead of this match at the Manuka Oval in Canberra and all the information needed to catch the match live.
Date: Tuesday, Feb. 24
Time: 3:30 a.m. (GMT)
Live Stream: Sky Go (UK)
TV Info: Sky Sports 2 (UK)
Windies Looking For Consecutive Wins
While the West Indies haven’t been consistently impressive in the early stages of this competition, they’ve been a wonderful team to watch. Their clash with Ireland was one of the most exciting games of the tournament to date, and in both of their matches so far they’ve totted up first-innings totals in excess of 300 runs.
Both of those scores have been accrued thanks to some blistering late hitting from the Windies, and in that particular facet of their play Andre Russell has shone. The all-rounder has bludgeoned a surfeit of late boundaries, and his knock of 42 from 13 balls against Pakistan last time out made for some encapsulating viewing.
James Gheerbrant of BBC Sport paid tribute to the firepower the Windies boast in the middle-lower order:
Russell was in a boisterous mood after their recent win, too, per Jamie Alter of cricbuzz.com:
"As I said before, it just goes to show that West Indies can dominate and we are here to compete. A lot of talks have been going around, but we are not paying any attention to those.
We just have to do what we have to do and get the job done on the field. We just turned up today and wanted to show the world that we are not just a pushover. We are always a good team and we can fight.
"
While the knock from Russell and another sizable score from Lendl Simmons were both positive factors to take away from the Pakistan win, arguably the most encouraging part of the performance was the bowling.
As we can see here, per CricketCountry, Jerome Taylor was in inspired form with the new ball in hand:
Against Ireland and in the series with South Africa leading up to the World Cup, the West Indies bowling attack has been smashed about. But they were much more disciplined as a collective against Pakistan, and in Taylor they have a raw, blistering quick-strike bowler who can turn in spells like the one above.
The Zimbabwe batsmen could struggle in the face of such a barrage, but it would be out of character for the Windies to turn in two displays of comparable clout back to back. If they do fall short of their best levels, the African side could well capitalise; they must refine some areas of their own game, however.
In their match with South Africa earlier in the tournament, Zimbabwe started the game with a real purpose. But after taking some early wickets, they became more and more ragged as the day wore on and as noted by cricket writer Neil Manthorp, the pair of JP Duminy and David Miller really got stuck into the bowling:
Batting-wise, Zimbabwe are capable of posting a big total, however, and if the Windies do start to lose focus with the ball players like Hamilton Masakadza—who scored 80 from 74 balls against the Proteas—and Brendan Taylor, they are capable of taking the game away from even the best sides.
But the West Indies should be buoyant coming into this one. The manner in which Zimbabwe lost their focus late in the innings against South Africa doesn’t bode well given the explosive talents of Jason Holder’s side, and they’ll make it back-to-back wins with an accomplished victory over the Africans.
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