Canada captain confident of reversing opening-day form
White Hill Field (Canada won toss): Canada (2pts) beat Cayman Islands (0) by 108 runs
Saad Zafar, the Canada captain, has declared that his team still stands a great chance of qualifying for the T20 World Cup after they bounced back from defeat against Bermuda with a big win against Cayman Islands.
The favourites to win the tournament heading into the opening weekend, Canada’s confidence was dented when they lost by 86 runs to the home side on Saturday, but they made a powerful statement of intent by posting 194 for six in 20 overs, the highest score so far in the tournament, before they cleaned up Cayman for 86 runs in 17.1 overs.
The result means Canada climb into second place in the table on net run-rate and Zafar feels the win over Cayman has given them the driving force they badly needed after being outplayed by Bermuda.
“I believe we are still in the tournament and it’s just about playing good cricket,’’ Zafar said.
“The brand of cricket we want to play is positive and if we’re able to play that for the next four games, we should be in a very good position of getting a spot in the World Cup.
“We had a disappointing day yesterday so we were looking to come back strong and gain that momentum.
“In a tournament momentum means a lot and it’s everything. The way we came back today and kept the positive intent just shows the character of the team.
“We still believe that we’re very much in the tournament, one bad day does not really define us. If we keep focusing on day to day and take one game at a time then we should have everything to play for on the last day.
Having a bad opening match means that Canada were forced to re-evaluate and Zafar revealed the minor changes made to get an improved performance
“I think it was mostly about getting used to the nature of the surface,” he said.
“We felt the wicket is a little slow and against Bermuda we rushed into playing our shots. Bermuda know the surface, they play here and they played some really good cricket to beat us on the day.
“But today we adjusted our line and length, we discussed that and even the batsmen knew which shots are on and which shots are not on. They adjusted their game and I think that’s why we made a good total, something we can defend and keep our net run-rate up.
“We really had a bad day and we lost by a big margin, so net run-rate does come into play and we have to make sure not only that we win the game but that we try to finish the game early.
“Every run that we save or every run that we make impacts the run-rate so it’s important, we’re aware of that and we try do that during the game.
“We can definitely beat Bermuda on the last day. We have a strong team and we just had one off day. I believe we have a very good chance of beating them, there is no doubt. It’s just about sticking to our strengths and playing our best game on the day.
“If we play to our potential and play the best on the day, we should be able to beat any team in this tournament.”
Canada
A Johnson c Sealy b Wright 47
N Dhaliwal b Morris 11
P Singh lbw b Wright 0
H Thaker c Ifill b Morris 47
N Kirton c Chin b Ifill 31
N Dutta c Bazil b Morris 4
S Zafar not out 21
D Heyliger not out 28
Extras (b 1, nb 2, w 2) 5
Total (6 wkts; 20 overs) 194
†S Wijeyeratne, K Sana and J Gordon did not bat
Fall of wickets: 1-59, 2-59, 3-59, 4-133, 5-143, 6-148.
Bowling: Wright 4-0-27-2; Dunka 3-0-32-0; Ifill 4-0-38-1; Morris 4-0-45-3; Bazil 4-0-46-0; Manning 1-0-5-0.
Cayman Islands
*R Sealy b Sana 7
P Heron c Thaker b Dutta 26
P Manning b Thaker 0
A Naidoo b Thaker 0
B Corbin c Thaker b Zafar 34
A Ifill lbw b Dutta 4
R Dunka c Kirton b Dutta 4
†P Chin c Dutta b Thaker 5
C Wright b Dutta 0
K Bazil b Sana 1
A Morris not out 0
Extras (lb 1, nb 2, w 2) 5
Total (17.1 overs) 86
Fall of wickets: 1-21, 2-27, 3-37, 4-71, 5-73, 6-80, 7-85, 8-85, 9-86.
Bowling: Sana 3-2-6-2; Gordon 2-0-20-0; Thaker 2.1-0-14-3; Heyliger 2-0-16-0; Zafar 4-0-17-1; Dutta 4-0-12-4.
Umpires: J Williams (West Indies) and J Lindo (United States)
Third umpire: E Carrington (Bermuda).
Match referee: R King (West Indies)
Table
P W L T NR Pts NRR
Bermuda 2 2 0 0 0 4 3.41
Canada 2 1 1 0 0 2 0.55
Cayman 2 1 1 0 0 2 -1.93
Panama 2 0 2 0 0 0 -1.94
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