The CouchExpert

 Srikrishnan Chandrasekaran

 9 August 2011

Zimbabwe has pulled off a remarkable come back into test cricket with a win over Bangladesh on their one-off test match series in Zimbabwe. This is a significant achievement for Zimbabwe as they have not played much test cricket at the international level for several years.

Brendan Taylor led Zimbabwe to a winning return to Test cricket.

The coachwof Zimbabwe has invested lot of time and hard work to form a team which has not played much cricket on International front to form a winning team. The two teams on show comprised of lot of young players and it was really good to see them played the test match that was well contested over five days.

As the current trend is for players is to opt to play for shorter formats of Cricket, this match will teach a lesson to the other cricket playing nation about the true value of test cricket. The match had total runs of 1100-plus, 35 wickets, 2 centuries, 2 four wicket hauls which were good good signs between 2 lowest level test playing nation and that their players had it in them to put performances required in the longest format.

Zimbabwe has shown great level of patience and character as the Bangladesh team contains lot of spinners who had really done great work in ODIs and Test cricket against the Asian Countries. Bangladesh will be disappointed that they could’t pull off a victory as was expected of them and they will feel disappointed. The home team has lot of reasons to enjoy and this will really accelerate the momentum for Zimbabwe in cricket arena. Declaration at the right time from the captain and three wickets at the end of day 4 which really set-up the Zimbabwe win.

Let’s hope they can build on it and go back to the heady days of being able to compete with the best which they did not so long ago.