BY SPORTSCAST WRITER
HARARE – Pressure was mounting on Zimbabwe cricket head coach Justin Sammons (pictured) following a string of poor results, and the South African didn’t hide his relief on Tuesday after his side’s ODI series win over Ireland.
Sammons was appointed Zimbabwe’s coach last June but hasn’t been able to swiftly turn things around, sparking murmours of doubts over his capacity to change the fortunes of a struggling team.
Tuesday’s thumping nine-wicket win at Harare Sports Club, steered by Ben Curran’s splendid unbeaten 118, handed the Zimbabweans a much-needed 2-1 series victory, much to the delight of Sammons who however was quick to take some blame for past results.
“I’ll take responsibility for the losses,” Sammons told local media during Tuesday’s post-match interview.
“But at the end of the day it’s the players that go and win the series, so the credit needs to go to them, they’ve been unbelievable. They’ve put in a lot of hard-work in the last six, seven months. It’s great to see that it has shown in this series.”
Sammons also admitted to feeling the pressure, and the ODI conquest of the Irish will go a long way in lifting some weight off his shoulders.
“I suppose it always helps when you are winning because when you are losing, there is always going to be question marks over processes and the direction towards the way we want to play the game,” Sammons said.
“So it definitely helps in that regard but at the end of the day it’s not about now, it’s the end vision, and the journey to get to that vision. We understand as a team and as coaching staff that there are going to be ups and there are going to be downs along that journey. It’s about staying the course, because you can easily slip into old habits, or things like that. So its important that we stay the course.”
Every journey has its different stages, and Sammons was challenged by the reporters to gage the Chevrons’ present phase on a scale of one to 100 percent.
“If I can be honest, I don’t think I can put a percentage on it, but we’ve got a long way to go, we’ve got a lot of improvements to do in all facets of the game – obviously from a mindset point of view, our level of skill needs to improve. Even the very best in the world, Virat Kohli is constantly trying to improve, Joe Root is constantly trying to improve. So I don’t think we can ever be satisfied in terms of where we actually are. But we know there is a long way to be where we actually want to be, and that is competing with the best in the world, and we know the standard that they are at.”
Before the recently concluded ODIs, Zimbabwe lost the once-off Test match to the Irish in Bulawayo earlier in the month, and the two rivals will now conclude the all-format contest with three T20Is at the weekend and next Tuesday in Harare.
While Sammons is for now just happy to get the monkey off his back, following the ODI success against Ireland, he can look back at some games his team has lost from the jaws of victory.
“We’ve come close, there are moments we know we’ve come really close over the past few months,” said Sammons.
“There have been moments that could have gone our way, it didn’t, and that obviously hurt in a sense. But I think the message is the same as it has always been, and that is we want to play to win the game, not to wait for the opposition to make mistakes, to actually go grab the bull by the horns and that’s what Ben (with his maiden century) did so brilliantly today within that power-play, the way he took it on, it was unbelievable. So that is the big message, ‘don’t be scared, don’t wait for the opposition to make mistakes, let us go and win the game’. That’s the mindset we are looking for and that is regardless of whether its 1-1, two nil down, or two nil up, we want that approach, you know, we want to be able to do that. Smart cricket doesn’t mean we are reckless, it doesn’t mean we are stupid, its within our minds that we are brave.”
