ICC World Cup Qualifiers, 2018: Zimbabwe vs UAE – Statistical Highlights

Zimbabwe might not be playing a World Cup for the first time since 1979 as they lost to UAE in their final Super Sixes game by a mere 3-run margin. The hosts were three down for just 45 runs while chasing a revised target of 230 in 40 overs. Sean Williams’ efforts along with Sikandar Raza and Peter Moor brought the equation to 45 from 34 balls. However, they lost their set batsmen and made a mess out of the run-chase. The hosts needed a six on the final delivery but Craig Ervine managed to score only a couple.

The Zimbabwe defeat now opened up an opportunity for both Afghanistan and Ireland, who will be facing off in a virtual semi-final for buying a ticket to the 2019 World Cup. The winner of Afghanistan and Ireland will be finishing behind Windies in the Super Sixes points table. In case of a washout, all the three teams will have five points. Ireland (0.4299) will go through ahead of Zimbabwe (0.4196) and Afghanistan (0.343) based on the better NRR.

In that case, Zimbabwe will be missing out on a CWC berth due to a narrow margin of 0.0103. Interestingly, if the AFG-IRE game ends in a Tie, Zimbabwe will get a life-line as Ireland’s NRR will come below 0.4. However, the rain continues to possess the threat towards the game like in the previous two days. The rain spoiled Scotland’s hopes on Wednesday who were set towards knocking out the Windies and brought DLS equation in the Zimbabwe-UAE game.

Here are some of the stats and numbers recorded during the Zimbabwe-UAE game:

1 – This win was United Arab Emirates’ maiden win in International cricket against a full-member nation. They faced full-member nation teams in 20 ODI games and five T20I matches losing in all of them. The 20 ODIs include three games against Ireland and one game against Afghanistan after attaining full-member status.

5 – Graeme Cremer bagged his 5th duck as an ODI captain of Zimbabwe. Three of those are golden ducks while one was a diamond duck. He bagged a first ball duck in the previous game against Windies as well. Thus, Cremer became the 2nd captain after Mohammad Azharuddin to bag golden ducks in consecutive ODI matches.

100 – Hamilton Masakadza become the first player to be part of 100 defeats in International cricket in a country. He has been a part of 100 International defeats of Zimbabwe in Zimbabwe so far.

1006 – Shaiman Anwar became the first UAE player to complete 1000 runs in ODI cricket. He scored 1006 runs in 32 ODI matches with one hundred and nine fifties. No other player scored even 700 runs in this format for UAE.