Top 5 captains and their lucky charm in ODI Cricket

4. Prosper Utseya and Forster Mutizwa – 7 matches

Forster Mutizwa made his ODI debut in 2009 at the age of 24 but didn’t play anymore after 2011. He played a couple of T20Is and a Test during the 2012 tour of New Zealand but never appeared in International games. Mutizwa had an impressive start to his career scoring 258 runs in six innings across his first seven ODIs that too at an average of 51.6 with help of three fifties.

He also had a strike rate of 101.57 in those seven ODIs but managed to score only one more fifty at an average below 20 and strike rate under 60 after that. Interestingly, Mutizwa’s first seven ODIs were played against Kenya and all of them under Prosper Utseya. He was part of all games in the 5-match away series at the start of 2009 and later played last two games of the home series in October.

Zimbabwe won all those seven matches and Mutizwa became a lucky charm for Utseya. The spinner was Zimbabwe’s ODI captain for nine more matches but none featured Forster Mutizwa. In those seven ODIs, only Hamilton Masakadza scored more runs than Mutizwa as he amassed 458 runs with help of three fifties and an unbeaten 178; the 2nd highest individual ODI score of Zimbabwe.