http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Zimbabwe-c3045 versus South Africa - First ODI: Bowlers to watch out for
There are a few bowlers in the current Zimbabwe team to look out for in their ODI series against http://www.senore.com/Cricket/South-Africa-c757. Let’s have a look at some of these bowlers:
Christopher Mpofu:
Christopher Mpofu is presently Zimbabwe’s fastest bowler. Everyone expects him to be a real star for his team as there is a long career ahead of him.
As a seam bowler, he hits the deck hard to extract any kind of movement from the wicket to trouble the best of batsmen in the business. He uses his height to good effect, getting extra amount of bounce from the pitch. Off-late, Mpofu has learned to swing
the ball away from right handers, benefiting from his current bowling coach, Heath Streak.
This lanky pace bowler from Zimbabwe has already shown his potential through some good bowling spells, but all in bits and pieces. His inconsistency with the ball has affected his overall figures. The right arm bowler still has a decent ODI record, considering
the support he has from his other countrymen.
In all, Christopher has so far played 44 matches while hunting down 48 victims at an average of 37 with a best of 6/48. He is still young so, he can always improve his bowling and numbers.
At the recently concluded T20 series against South Africa, this right arm quick bowler has been somewhat off-target. In the first match, he bowled an economical spell, giving away only 25 runs in 4 incisive overs but wickets were needed to restrict the Proteas
fewer than 168 runs, which he failed to provide.
Moreover, he will definitely want to forget the 2nd match where the South African batsmen really went after him as they scored 194. As a result, Mpofu conceded 59 runs in his quota of 4 overs, taking only a single wicket in a losing cause.
These T20 matches are now, all history and One Day Internationals are a different game-ball altogether. The touring Zimbabweans will be hoping that their premier bowler provides them with some early breakthroughs.
http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Prosper-Utseya-c82728:
Prosper Utseya is another one of the new generation players to emerge from Zimbabwe as he was inducted into the side at http://www.senore.com/Cricket/A-Young-c41367 age of 19. He is a right-arm off-break bowler, perhaps, the most valuable one in their squad.
His bowling skills are backed by a sharp bowling brain as he can be quite precise with his line and length. Basically, as a bowler he know what he is doing.
As an off-spin bowler, he is not the one that you could easily associate with Saqlain Mushtaq’s school of thought. He is more of a Graeme Swan type as he is accurate and gives his off-spinner a real tweak and also tries to deceive the batsman in the flight.
Utseya's overall figures might not suggest his talent with the ball but he certainly has made an impact on this Zimbabwe side with his spin bowling. As a matter of fact, Utseya is improving day by day and as the time progresses, his overall numbers will
definitely improve.
In his 114 ODIs so far, he has gathered 87 victims at an average of 45 with a best of 4/46. In addition, his economy rate of 4.1 indicates his accuracy.
The T20 series against South Africa wasn’t a bad one for this Off-breaker. Although, he gave away 41 runs in his four overs but still managed to take two important wickets to pull his team back into the 1st match. However, with lesser support at the other
end, Utseya ended up on the losing side as Proteas achieved the wining total.
Meanwhile, the 2nd T20 was dominated by the batsmen as 380 runs in total were scored from both ends. The off-breaker still managed a match tally of 2/28 in his four overs but again, he ended up on the losing side.
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