Zimbabwe cricket coach Heath Streak said on Tuesday he wanted his players to play \u201cwinning cricket\u201d when they meet South Africa in a one-off day-night Test next week.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019d rather lose trying to play a winning brand of cricket than just compete,\u201d said Streak of a Test South Africa are expected to win comfortably.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe main thing is belief and shaking off that underdog mentality we had,\u201d he said in Paarl, the western Cape Town where Zimbabwe begin a three-day warm-up match against a South African Invitation team on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Zimbabwe have played just ten Tests since they last met South Africa in Harare in August 2014, losing nine and drawing one.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s well documented how little Test cricket we play,\u201d said Streak. \u201cI think for us it\u2019s less about the type of cricket than about playing at international level.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhether it\u2019s playing Tests or one-day internationals, it\u2019s the gaps in between that are the biggest challenge for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
The contest with South Africa will be Zimbabwe\u2019s first day-night Test and captain Graeme Cremer admitted: \u201cWe haven\u2019t played with a pink ball and we haven\u2019t played a lot under lights.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cremer said this week\u2019s day-night match at Boland Park was a crucial part of his team\u2019s preparation for the Test.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve had two sessions under lights to see how it reacts,\u201d said Cremer.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt twilight, when it\u2019s starting to get dark a little more seems to happen off the wicket.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis warm-up game will give us a good idea of what to expect and there will be lots of discussion before the Test.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both Streak and Cremer are looking forward to playing in the first scheduled four-day Test in more than four decades.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe so-called bigger teams will probably have to score a bit quicker and give the lesser teams more opportunities to take wickets. The game will move a lot quicker, I think,\u201d said Cremer.<\/p>\n
Streak said that with 98 overs a day instead of the usual 90, there would be plenty of time to achieve results.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith 98 overs a day, it makes it a four-and-a-half day Test and the twilight conditions will be more challenging for batters,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Cremer said Zimbabwe needed to play consistently well throughout a Test match and avoid the off periods that have cost them previous series.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe tend to lose Test matches in a certain period, say in an afternoon or in one day of the Test match.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut we\u2019ve played a lot of good cricket. It\u2019s usually been the first innings with the batting that we have struggled so we\u2019re hoping to change that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Zimbabwe cricket coach Heath Streak said on Tuesday he wanted his players to play \u201cwinning cricket\u201d when they meet South Africa in a one-off day-night Test next week. \u201cWe\u2019d rather lose trying to play a winning brand of cricket than just compete,\u201d said Streak of a Test South Africa are expected to win comfortably. \u201cThe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14595,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14594"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14594\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14596,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14594\/revisions\/14596"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}