Pat the Zimbos

At last, the rest of Zimbabweans repaid Brendan Taylor's efforts this series with the necessary support to snatch an incredible win, at Bulawayo yesterday. A fine effort it was too.

I didn't say much about Taylor's outstanding century in my previous post, and sure enough it came back to bite me. Before the game I got the feeling that Brendan was carrying his team in the same manner that Shakib-Al-Hasan did last year, when he almost single-handedly put one (sorry, four) over on us.

I was about to suggest that the way for the Zimbos to register a win was to let Taylor bowl as well, he can do no wrong at the moment. But Waller and Taibu stepped up magnificently. They played with nearly as much luck as spirit - thinking about those dropped catches from Rossco makes me cringe - but NZ had enough in those stakes, over the first two games.

I can afford to admit that I was quite happy with the Zimbos winning that thrilling chase, after all we had already wrapped up the series; certainly it is way easier to stomach this than the Banglawash last year.

And the game did have a couple of positives ths time. Ryder, Rossco and Williamson (terrific century from him) all got time in the middle, so apparently we have an in-form top five going into the test match. The second, well - we now know even together Nathan McCullum and Luke Woodcock aren't really worthy replacements for Vettori, so we have three months to continue looking.