KARACHI: Pakistan are taking on Zimbabwe in an important Group A match of the ICC Cricket World Cup 2011 at Pallekele Stadium in Kandy on Monday but Men in Green have a clear advantage on the African side as far as statistics are concerned.
The two teams have played so far played 40 One Day International matches where Pakistan have won 36, Zimbabwe only two, one match ended in a tie, while another one ended with no result.
In the World Cup competitions, the two teams have so far played three matches, all of which, have been comfortably won by Pakistan while in the sub-continent Pakistan have won 15 out of their 16 meetings thus far.
Pakistan would be looking to come out of their dismal performance against New Zealand and show a champion display against Zimbabwe whose top order batsmen have started to find their feet and form.
As far as the recent form of both teams is concerned, Pakistan have lost four out of their last five matches while Zimbabwe have won only one game from their last five.
The concerning point for Zimbabwe is their middle order batting that has failed to fire in this tournament and despite their openers regained the lost touch in the match against Sri Lanka they will have play out of their skins to challenge Pakistan’s bowling attack that has a great depth.
On the flip side, Pakistan’s top order batting is in dismal shape but middle order batting has been doing all the scoring as Misbah-ul-Haq has scored 192 runs while Umar Akmal has scored 167 runs so far in the tournament. Younus Khan and Kamran Akmal have shown promise but have failed to capitalize on their good starts and one may think Zimbabwe would be the team they would like to gain their form and confidence against.
Brendan Taylor, Tatenda Taibu and Craig Ervine have done bulk of the run-scoring for Zimbabwe so far with 140, 117, and 113 runs respectively.
Pakistan’s skipper Shahid Khan Afridi has been the one bowler who has performed so far in the tournament as he leads the tournament with 15 wickets at an economy rate of only 3.36 while Chris Mpofu (6 wkts) and Ray Price (5 wkts) are leading the Zimbabwean bowling attack.
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