The last time Australia played Zimbabwe in a bilateral ODI was 6664 days ago. And the last time Australia took on Zimbabwe in the 50-over format was in a tri-series in August 2014. The fact is, Zimbabwe and Australia just don’t play often enough.
Zimbabwe have won only two ODIs against their famed opponent - the first time the two sides met in the 1983 World Cup and also the last time these two teams took on each other in Harare, and it isn’t going to get any easier for the African nation when they lock horns versus Australia in their own turf in a three-match 50-over bilateral series, starting Sunday.
Incidentally, the bilateral ODI series was scheduled to take place in 2020 but got postponed due to Covid-19.
Conditions in Hobart during October are likely to be significantly different to Townsville in late August, but for a team that hasn’t been to Australia in seven years, every opportunity is an important one to gather little nuggets of intel and experience that could be useful.
“It’s massive,” Chakabva said. “It’s the first time in Australia for a whole load of guys and they’ll be looking to soak in the conditions as much as we can and certainly keeping an eye on that T20 World Cup in a few week’s time.”
Just that Raza needs more support from the rest of the batting line-up. Zimbabwe’s collapses over five ODIs against Bangladesh and India read: 6 for 2, 27 for 3, 18 for 3, 31 for 4 and 31 for 4. Eventually, Zimbabwe made a better fist of their batting efforts in the final ODI versus India.
“[The India game] obviously gave us a lot of confidence. We’d been speaking a lot before that series, just in terms of how competitive we want to be, and the last game was pretty close to what we want to be doing.”