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Mehluli Sibanda in Bloemfontein, South Africa
SOUTH African pace bowler Dale Steyn has condemned the Mangaung Oval track, describing it as unsuitable for international cricket.

Steyn, the unlikely hero of the Proteas with the bat in their 120-run triumph over Zimbabwe in Wednesday’s day/night ODI, described the Mangaung Oval wicket as being poor.

The veteran, playing his first ODI in almost two years, struck his maiden half century in this format of the game, top scoring for South Africa with 60 before displaying a fiery spell of fast bowling which paved the way for their dismissal of Zimbabwe for a low score.

Last Sunday, the pitch at the Diamond Oval in Kimberly turned out to be unpredictable and Steyn said he hoped the Boland Park track would be much better.

“I think the wicket obviously wasn’t the best, if I must be honest with you. I’ve been around, I’ve seen quite a lot of different pitches to play on. It’s not the kind of wickets we really want to be playing cricket on. I thought Kimberly was pretty poor and thought we would just get better coming to Bloem. I am hoping that Paarl is going to be the best one,” Steyn said.

His blistering bowling pace might have earned him just two wickets, but he paved the way for spinner Imran Tahir to pick up six wickets, including a hat-trick, as Zimbabwe crumbled to 78 all out, their lowest ever ODI score against South Africa.

This was following their opening ODI match in Kimberly where they were bundled out for 117, which, until Wednesday, was their worst score in ODIs against their neighbours. Tahir’s hat-trick, spread over two overs, saw him dismiss Sean Williams, Peter Moor and Brandon Mavuta.

Zimbabwe pace bowler Kyle Jarvis, who took two wickets for 26 runs in 10 overs, made it clear that they could not make excuses based on the pitch seeing that they lost six wickets to Tahir’s leg spin.

“Regardless of the pitch, which I thought was almost borderline dangerous, we lost six wickets to spin, so I guess we can’t really use that as an excuse. We really thought we were in with a good opportunity to win the game, but unfortunately we didn’t and we let it slip away,” Jarvis said.

Zimbabwe’s batsmen were once again exposed, with skipper Hamilton Masakadza top scoring with 27 in his 200th ODI. Just to show how pathetic Zimbabwe’s batting was, their next recognisable score was tail-ender Donald Tiripano’s unbeaten 12.

With South Africa having wrapped up the series, Zimbabwe will certainly look to play for nothing else but pride in the last ODI in Paarl tomorrow.

The third ODI will be another day/night game. — @Mdawini_29