ODI Cricket: Ireland vs Zimbabwe

Yesterday, Ireland and Zimbabwe played an ODI cricket match at Harare Sports Club, Harare. Toss went into the favor of Zimbabwe team and they decided to field first.

Ireland opened its batting innings with the openers William Porterfield and Paul Stirling. They gave an very good start scoring more than 6 runs per over in the first over. But in the second over, they lost William Porterfield. They started to loose wickets in regular intervals but with a larger gaps because of some good contributions to the total score. By 50 overs, Ireland lost 9 wickets and scored a total of 238 runs. Teams top scorer was Kevin OBrien who was unbeaten till the end of the innings. He scored 73 runs 102 deliveries which included 3 fours and 3 sixes. Prosper Utseya was the economical bowler for the Zimbabwe whose economy rate was 3.7 runs per over and he picked up 2 wickets.

Zimbabwe needed 239 runs to win in 50 overs. Hamilton Masakadza and Brendan Taylor started the batting innings for the Zimbabwe team. They gave very slow start and their net run rate was less than 3 runs per over after 6 overs. Hamilton Masakadza got out by giving a pretty simple catch to Andrew White in the fourth delivery of the 7th over. After this fall, there were few good partnerships and some good contributions from each players which helped the Zimbabwe team to move closer to their target. By 48.5 overs, they scored 239 runs with the loss of 7 wickets. Zimbabwe won the match by 3 wickets. Brendan Taylor became the man of the match as he scored 71 runs and helped in building some good partnerships that helped the team to win the match.