Zimbabwe coach Dave Houston laments ‘embarrassingly bad’ loss to Namibia

WINDHOEK: Zimbabwe coach Dave Houghton has termed his team’s initial performance in the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup Qualifier Africa Final 2023 as ‘embarrassing.’ He’s encouraging his players to swiftly move past this showing and refocus on getting back to winning ways.

Houghton was aiming for a top-two finish to snatch one of the two remaining places in next year’s ICC Men’s T20 World Cup. But faced a challenging beginning, losing to Namibia by seven wickets on Wednesday.

Despite winning the toss on a favorable batting wicket, Zimbabwe could only score 132/8. Namibia’s powerful batting, particularly Nikolaas Davin’s impressive 89, chased down the target comfortably with over five overs remaining.

Houghton said the performance was ‘embarrassingly bad’ and could find no reason why his men played so poorly during the fixture.

“I have just spent quite a bit of time in the changeroom with the team after that game and, when you ask what went wrong, as far as I am concerned, we got everything wrong,” Houghton was quoted by ICC.

“We were awful today, embarrassingly bad. I think it’s probably one of the worst games that I have ever been associated with in a Zimbabwean jersey.

“Why it happens, I have absolutely no idea. We train hard, we train with specifics. The guys worked really hard, they had enough energy coming into this game, but we batted poorly and followed that up by bowling poorly and our fielding was average,” he said. IANS

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