Houghton upbeat after Namibian tour

THERE might have been heartaches and roars of disapproval after Zimbabwe’s T20 cricket series defeat to Namibia last week, but Chevrons coach Dave Houghton, who believes the tour’s purpose was much more than winning, is a satisfied man.

The Chevrons suffered a 3-2 series defeat at the hands of Namibia in a five-day T20 series in Windhoek.

For Houghton, the series was meant to prepare for the 2024 ICC T20 World Cup regional qualifiers in Namibia later this month. “I have tried to emphasise . . . that this was a training camp for us to prepare for the qualifiers,” he said.

“The results were the least of my concerns. “People seem anxious over the result of the fifth game. It was played on a wet wicket after the groundsman left the sprinklers on all night. Hopefully, that won’t happen in the qualifiers.”

Some of the debutants whom the Chevrons travelled with failed to live up to expectations during the series.

However, the coach was more concerned about the future than the practice series.

“If the only thing we ever worry about in Zimbabwe Cricket are the results of the first team, we will never progress and we will stay in this endless cycle of winning a few and losing a few, never improving,” he said.

“I take every opportunity I can to give more men a taste of international cricket so that we can identify and build on our success.”

The tour, he said, had been fruitful as they got a chance to have first-hand experience of what to expect when they travel for the qualifiers in a fortnight.

“We got to know a lot about the wickets — they are slower than ours — conditions (very hot), and practice facilities (few and not great), and the trip there is very long and arduous.

“It was about 13 hours from home in Harare to the hotel in Windhoek, and these are some of the things that we wanted to have first-hand experience of before the qualifiers, which are in two weeks, and I am delighted we went.”

The series also afforded Houghton with the opportunity to assess the players and try some combinations ahead of the qualifiers.

“We won most of the tosses in this trip and we chose to experiment with batting first or second.

“Batting second seemed to favour us until the last game on that wet wicket, and we should have won the game but we didn’t play the situation well and lost too many wickets trying to hit boundaries,” he said.