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Brandon Moyo, [email protected]

FOLLOWING their crushing innings defeat at the hands of South Africa Emerging in the first four-day match, Zimbabwe Emerging will be hoping to get their house in order when the second and final four-dayer gets underway today at Queens Sports Club.

The hosts only had Monday and Tuesday to try and fix their errors going into today’s start.

Zimbabwe Emerging were outplayed by their South African counterparts in the first encounter with the game ending on the first session of day four. Head coach, Steve Mangongo says his players have to be in the right state of mind if they are to compete in the second game.

Speaking after their demolition on Sunday, Mangongo said they can prepare as much as they can, however, if the players are not mentally prepared for the challenge, it will be a waste of time. He added that they received some data from the team analysts and they will be using it to fix their mistakes from the first encounter.

“We had only two days to get our heads right. It’s a mental thing, it’s an attitude thing. We can hit as many balls as we want but at the end of the day when the players cross the rope, he has to have the decision making processes correct.

“That becomes the mental aspect of things, so we are sitting down, we are talking to our players, we got all the data from our analysts, so we are going to break it down and do that post mortem intensively and hopefully, the second time around, our mental processes will be better,” said Mangongo.

The gaffer also added that they did not have their fundamentals right in the first match – dropping catches, failing to bat more than 100 overs – and would be hoping to get it in place for the make or break second game.

A Zimbabwe Emerging team, which is a mixture of experience and youth was hammered by a youthful South Emerging side by an innings and 186 runs in the first encounter.

Batting first, the hosts had a dismal showing at the top before half-centuries from Brandon Mavuta, Alastair Frost and Ernest Masuku restored some parity to their innings. The trio guided Zimbabwe Emerging to a first innings score of 216 run in 69, 3 overs. 

However, South Africa Emerging would go on to score a mammoth 568/6 in their first innings. The visitors batted 136, 1 overs. 

Faced with a tall order going into the second innings, Zimbabwe Emerging were bowled out for just 184 runs in 80,2 overs. With a poor batting display, Zimbabwe Emerging were equally bad in the field, dropping nine catches.

Today’s match is scheduled to start at 10am and is free of charge. Fans have been called in to come in their numbers to watch the exciting emerging teams. After the completion of the four-day games, the two teams are scheduled to face off in three 50-over matches.

 —@brandon_malvin