At the Riverway Stadium in Townsville, the first of three one-day internationals, Glenn Maxwell hit an unbeaten 32 off nine balls to lead Australia to an easy victory over Zimbabwe by five wickets. The match was the first of three one-day internationals.
At the Riverway Stadium in Townsville on Sunday, the first of three one-day internationals, Glenn Maxwell hammered an unbeaten 32 off nine balls to lead Australia to an easy victory over Zimbabwe by five wickets. The match was the first of three one-day internationals. The Australians won the first game of the three-game series by achieving their win target of 201 runs with more than 16 overs to spare. This puts them ahead 1-0 in the series.
The all-rounder Cameron Green ripped away the Zimbabwe tail with 5-33 as the visitors fell from 185-4 to 200 all out, which was a total that was never going to be enough against a full-strength Australian team.
Aaron Finch, the captain of Australia, and David Warner got off to a good start in their attempt to score runs, scoring at a rate of six runs per over. However, when the score was 43, Finch played on to Richard Ngarava, giving up 15 runs and extending his recent run of bad form.
Warner was then joined by Steve Smith, and the two of them cruised to 78-1 before Warner was dropped at backward point off of Sikandar Raza.
The left-handed batsman took most of his opportunities and raced to 57 before being dismissed by Raza. This left Australia with a score of 108-2 after 23 overs.
Despite a hiccup in which Zimbabwe’s spinners Raza (1-45) and Ryan Burl (3-60) took off Alex Carey, Marcus Stoinis, and Mitchell Marsh, the calm Smith and the bludgeoning Maxwell saw their side home without further panic.
In the race to the target, Smith scored 48 runs without being out off of 80 balls, while Maxwell scored 32 runs off of nine deliveries faced with three fours and three sixes, with two of the sixes coming off of the last two balls.
Finch mentioned that it has been challenging to play against opponents who are unfamiliar with them, as Zizmbawe are now participating in their first series in Australia since 2004.
He explained, “When you get to the ground in the morning, you see a few actions to try to get a feel for what you might be facing in the center.” “You do your due diligence beforehand and view a lot of tape,” he said. “You watch a lot of footage.”
“I believed that was a really strong performance from all of us, and I believed that our bowlers delivered an outstanding performance.”
Throughout their innings, Zimbabwe consistently added runs to their total, but only the opener Tadiwanashe Marumani, who scored 45, and Wessly Madhevere, who scored 72, were able to get on top of the Australian attack.
Adam Zampa, who bowls leg-spin, was the one who inflicted the early damage. He was the one who took three of the first five wickets, which led to Zimbabwe reaching 185-5.
The visitors probably wanted to score at least 240 runs in order to set a difficult target for themselves, but the tail couldn’t keep up with the pace set by the towering Green, and as a result, they lost their last six wickets for a total of 15 runs and were all out in the 48th over.
Regis Chakabva, the captain of Zimbabwe, admitted that his team’s batting performance was not up to pace.
