ZIMBABWE cricket head coach, Dave Houghton; has backed newly-appointed T20 captain, Sikandar Raza, to stir the country towards a new horizon as he takes charge of the team for the first time this afternoon in the first match of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup Qualifier Africa against the hosts Namibia in Windhoek.
The 37-year-old all-rounder took over from his predecessor Craig Ervine who will now concentrate on leading the team in One Day Internationals.
Raza has played 71 T20Is scoring 1436 averaging 22.43 and a highest score of 87 while also taking 42 wickets and a best match bowling performance of 4/8. He has been the pillar of the Chevrons on many occasions literally winning matches almost single-handedly.
As Zimbabwe embark on the road to West Indies and USA 2024 with a date against Namibia this afternoon, Houghton believes Raza is such a strong personality who does not break down easily. Instead of choking due to the added responsibility on the all-rounder’s shoulders, Houghton has backed him to do well as the team captain.
“Look, I have never really played in a game where Raza is the captain, I just know him as a personality. I mean, obviously he’s a big personality within our team and he has leadership qualities in that the players have huge respect for him,” said Houghton.
“His leadership on the field I should imagine would be different from Craig’s. Craig’s a more relaxed leader, quiet on the field and so on and Raza is a little bit more outspoken in your face as a leader. We are at a time as a team we are growing as well. Maybe new leadership on the field will make a difference. Let’s have a look and see, I expect that from Raza. I expect him to be strong on the field and to be vocal in team discussions and things like that.”
Houghton has made his intentions clear; he wants to win from the onset and win big for that matter.
“The tendency even from people who are fans, they talk about us going back to Namibia to play Namibia, well Namibia are one of the seven sides in the qualifiers. Obviously, I want to hit the ground running, I want us to beat them. It's as simple as that. We have more knowledge of their team than they have of ours because they played their best team against us three weeks ago,” he added.
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“But, I have been explaining to our guys that we cannot only focus on one team. We have to come out and play our brand of cricket and beat every team that’s in front of us. The fact of the matter is that two people who will be considered our biggest threats will be Namibia and Uganda and we play them first and second. But you then can’t take your eyes off the ball. I was chatting to the guys and they said when we played them in the last T20 World Cup Qualifiers in Bulawayo, the biggest fight we got was from Jersey and no one would have expected that at all. Who is Jersey to give us the problem?
“But, they play good honest cricket, they try hard and in fact one of them is die-hard they can cause you problems. So, we have to have our eye on every team we play whether it will be Nigeria, Tanzania, Kenya or whoever, we have to play our brand of cricket, bully the opposition to come away with good wins.”
