"Awful": Coach Dave Houghton on Zimbabwe's performance against Namibia

WINDHOEK: Zimbabwe coach Dave Houghton wasn't pleased with his side's start to the ICC Men's T20 World Cup Qualifier Africa Final 2023 and he labelled the performance against Namibia "awful" and "embarrassing". Zimbabwe on paper is considered to be one of the teams to finish in the top two positions and take away one of the two remaining spots in the T20 World Cup which is set to take place next year.

However, their hunt for a place in the World Cup started on the wrong note as they ended up on the losing side against Namibia. After winning the toss, Zimbabwe managed to put in a paltry score of 132/8 on a pitch that seemed to assist the batters. But Namibia's batting line-up chased down the total with more than five overs to spare. Nikolaas Davin was the pick of the batters as he struck 89 off just 45 balls to guide his team to a comfortable victory.

Houghton wasn't impressed with his team's performance and after the game said as quoted from the ICC, "I have just spent quite a bit of time in the changeroom with the team after that game and, when you ask what went wrong, as far as I am concerned, we got everything wrong." "We were awful today, embarrassingly bad. I think it's probably one of the worst games that I have ever been associated with in a Zimbabwean jersey. Why it happens, I have absolutely no idea. We train hard, we train with specifics. The guys worked really hard, they had enough energy coming into this game, but we batted poorly and followed that up by bowling poorly and our fielding was average," Houghton added.

Zimbabwe don't have much time to dwell on the defeat as they face Tanzania at the United Cricket Ground in Windhoek on Thursday. After the defeat, Houghton said that his team now needed to win the next five games to qualify for the tournament. He said, "It's a terrible start to this tournament, but we do know we've got to win the next five games and still qualify. That's important for us, but not my best day and certainly not my happiest day. In fact, I feel like we should be all out here apologising to our fans."