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Hosein, as expected, bowled in the powerplay, and had 3-1-21-2 by the end of it. The maiden, the third over of the Zimbabwe innings, included the wickets of Brian Bennett and Ryan Burl, and two dots to Sikandar Raza. He finished with 3 for 28. Motie came on after the powerplay, got the wicket of Dion Myers in his first over, bowled his quota of overs on the trot, and finished with 4 for 28, having added the wickets of Raza and Tashinga Musekiwa off back-to-back balls in the 11th over and that of Tony Munyonga in the 13th, also a maiden.
“I think tactically they were smart. Akeal Hosein, throwing the ball to him for someone like Bennett, not having seen him before, and that was an absolute beauty,” Faf du Plessis said on ESPNcricinfo’s TimeOut programme after the game. The delivery to Bennett was indeed a ripper. Flighted up from around the wicket by the left-arm spinner, it landed on middle stump and spun (and bounced) right past Bennett’s attempted hoick to the leg side to hit the top of off stump.
“You normally don’t associate him beating the bat on the outside. He normally beats you on the inside quite often,” du Plessis elaborated. “So when a ball spins and bounces like that, it shows you it’s a quality ball. The way he started the innings… they are two very different spinners. One is a powerplay… almost like a [Samuel] Badree, brilliant in the powerplay, and Motie comes in after six and he just shuts the game down.”
That flight is something one does associate with Motie, who is a bit more classical than Hosein, a very powerplay kind of bowler. It was that, du Plessis said, and the pace at which the two bowled – slightly slower than usual – that did the trick for them on a red-soil pitch where the ball gripped a little bit. Motie’s own moment to remember came against Raza. Flat and on a length from around the wicket, the left-arm spinner got the ball to grip and turn viciously from middle stump to hit off stump, beating Raza’s outside edge and leaving him imbalanced.
“I am not sure the wicket changed much from the first to the second innings. But just looking at the pace that Akeal Hosein was bowling at, and Motie, there was a little bit of… just above the eyeline for the ball to have time to spin, and you look at someone like Sikandar Raza, he bowled very, very quickly, trying to bowl defensive,” du Plessis said. Hosein and Motie combined for 7 for 56 from their eight overs. Raza returned 3-0-52-0. That, to be fair, is also a reflection of the batting power of the two line-ups – Shimron Hetmyer smashed 85 in 34 balls, Rovman Powell 59 in 35 balls, and Sherfane Rutherford 31 not out in 13. Graeme Cremer, a more pedigreed spinner than Raza, was Zimbabwe’s only bowler to go at under ten runs an over, returning 1 for 38 from his four.
But bowling against Zimbabwe, despite their success at the T20 World Cup so far, especially after burying them under 254, could be vastly different to bowling against South Africa and India, who West Indies play next in the Super Eight.
“I saw them in South Africa. And I have played a lot of cricket with and against both of them. Amazing spinners. If there’s a little bit of something in the wicket, both of them [will exploit it],” du Plessis said. “But the test will come now when they play against a lot of lefties in India, how’re they going to respond to that, and South Africa played both of them really well in South Africa [in the T20I series in January this year].”
West Indies play South Africa in Ahmedabad on Thursday and India in Kolkata on Sunday.
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