Zimbabwe in a `Raising Hope` Loss

By Perkins-Tino Bare Zimbabwe showed great courage in their opening World Cup encounter in Hamilton at Seddon Park as they went down rather harshly to their neighbours and bitter rivals in one of the biggest rivals in World Cricket by a mere 62 runs in a voraciously contested match which forced the Proteas to turn to their middle order batsmen for runs escaping with death rather pistoriously. In what was a tightly contested match and the skipper Elton Chigumbura selected to field and with the short boundaries, we were already expecting big scores in the match. In what was already dubbed the Battle of Africa, South Africa sent in Hashim Amla and Quinton De Cock to start up their quite long batting line-up. De Cock was to depart in the third over after he was caught off by Craig Ervine from a Chatara ball for a meager 11 runs which was to become the order of the day for the top order batsmen for South Africa. With the Proteas at 10/1 Faf Du Plessis walked to the crease a...