West Indies will play Zimbabwe in the fifth and the final ODI of the series at the Kingstown in St. Vincent. The West Indian side won the fourth ODI yesterday to take an unassailable lead of 3-1 in the series and that meant that the tourists can only look at drawing a consolation win from the final game to derive some confidence before they head into the IC World T20 next month in the same country.

At the expense of being very repetitive, one can barely overemphasise the point behind Zimbabwe struggling with the bat throughout the duration of the series. In the first game, they had a near-250 to their name, which changed to 200 in the second match and then to two consecutive 100 odd scores. Clearly, they need a morale boosting performance at the top of the order, and for that they need Vusi Sibanda to do exactly what he had done in the first game; bat the 50 overs without worrying too much how much he gets to.

Rather surprisingly, the West Indies batsmen have also struggled to get to these lowish totals. And that has partly been possible thanks to the excellent bowling by the Zimbabwean spinners. Not often would you find slow bowlers being stacked up in the side as well as the tourists have done, and their only ray of anything remotely medium pace is in the form of Elton Chigumbura. Who probably bowls at not more than 110 km/hr!

Which is not to say that the strategy is wrong, because as is evident, it is working. Apart from Chris Gayle, and to an extent Shiv Chanderpaul, the rest of the batsmen have struggled to get a move on, and that has continued to remain an issue with the hosts, ever since the start of the Australian ODIs. Adrian Barath gets a start and then, invariably gets out, while the other youngsters have not been able to take that step up against a not-too-strong bowling.

Fortunately for the hosts, their bowlers have begun to come to the party as well as Darren Sammy and Dwayne Bravo have been able to vary their pace and get those subtle movements off the air and the pitch to deceive the Zimbabwean batsmen. And if the sleeping giant, and a very fast bowler at that, Kemar Roach awakens after a period of relative calm, then it could be all over for the Zimbabweans even before the late-comers can take their seats.

Tag :- Darren Sammy   Elton Chigumbura   Kemar Roach   Vusi Sibanda   West Indies   Zimbabwe