Assessing the surface at the venue, Raza felt that bowling first would give Zimbabwe the best chance of gaining early control. “Let’s bowl first. We looked at the wicket and it looked like there was some early movement and with the wind blowing as well, I think the wicket will look to improve from what I can see. Give our seamers the best chance to make the ball do the talking,” Raza said at the toss.
The Zimbabwe captain also highlighted his team’s extended preparation in Sri Lanka ahead of the tournament. “Zimbabwe and Sri Lanka share a very good relationship, so they were kind enough to allow us to come a week before and we were in Hambantota for a week. And then we were here for five days as well. So definitely those 10-12 days definitely helped us prepare. And adapt to the conditions and we couldn’t wait for the show to hit the road from Zimbabwe,” he added.
When asked about his preferred target of the chase, Raza said: “Definitely one more than what the opposition said, but the idea is to restrict them to a very low total as well and try to hit our straps early and then take it from there. The idea is to mix it up really well so our batsmen don’t have to do too much. But having said that, regardless of the score, I’ll do one more. We’ve got two spinningtons ourselves and we’ve got three seamers. got Brad, Blessing Muzarabani and Ngarava.”
Oman captain Jatinder Singh, meanwhile, was happy with the conditions despite losing the toss and felt a competitive total was possible. “Definitely. It’s a good surface and it definitely settled down a bit in the second innings. The preparation was excellent. We arrived in Sri Lanka quite early and had a really strong line-up. We played a few matches and as the conditions are very different here it was important that we got used to them. It’s also a lot more humid than the place in Oman, so overall I think the preparation 16 was ready. 06. 165 would be ideal, anything in that range should to be competitive,” Singh said.
Teams
Zimbabwe (Playing XI): Brian Bennett, Tadiwanashe Marumani, Dion Myers, Brendan Taylor (wk), Sikandar Raza (c), Ryan Burl, Tashinga Musekiwa, Brad Evans, Wellington Masakadza, Richard Ngarava, Blessing Muzarabani
Oman (Playing XI): Jatinder Singh (c), Aamir Kaleem, Hammad Mirza, Wasim Ali, Karan Sonavale, Jiten Ramanandi, Vinayak Shukla (wk), Sufyan Mehmood, Nadeem Khan, Shah Faisal, Shakeel Ahmed.