	products recent interviews FastScripts archive about ASAP Sports

Our Clients:

Browse by Sport

Find us on

Subscribe to RSS

Click to go to
Asaptext.com

View our
e-Brochure

ICC CRICKET WORLD CUP

February 18, 2015

Elton Chigumbura

NELSON, NEW ZEALAND

Q. What are your preparations like for the game against UAE?
ELTON CHIGUMBURA: The preparation has been going good. Playing the first game gave us the opportunity to try and correct where we went wrong from the first one. The two days that we've got, we tried to polish that, and yeah, we're now looking forward to the UAE game.

Q. Was it a sense of frustration at the end of the match against South Africa, or were you guys‑‑ was it a confidence boost? ELTON CHIGUMBURA: It was a bit of both, a confidence boost the way we played, and also it's always disappointing to play the way we did 90 overs, and we didn't manage to finish off the last 10 overs. But we took a lot out of the game that we played, and hopefully we can carry on with that form.

Q. You haven't seen much of the UAE. You guys have never played against each other in ODIs. What do you know about the team, and what are you expectingtomorrowfrom them?
ELTON CHIGUMBURA: Every team that we're going to play, we have to respect them and play the cricket that we are capable of playing, and hopefully the good thing about cricket, a good boy is a good boy, so we just have to try and do the basics right, and obviously there's one or two guys that we know, so when I have to go back to basics because my judge of the players, we don't know. At the end of the day, we just want to play good cricket.

Q. Was the Ireland‑West Indies match just a reminder that sometimes the associate teams can bring a surprise?
ELTON CHIGUMBURA: Yeah, it is. Every team that is here is capable of winning games, so at the end of the day, we have to take every game seriously and do the basics right and make sure that when you get into good winning position you are ruthless and win the game.

Q. And Hamilton is in great form, 100 in the warm‑up game and 80 against South Africa. How much important is that for the Zimbabwe side, such a key player?
ELTON CHIGUMBURA: Yeah, it is. He's leading from the front. He's a senior batter on the team, and it's rubbing off to the rest of the players. The good thing about our team at the moment, everyone is in good nick, so we don't expect just Hamilton to put up a good performance. The rest of the guys in the squad are capable of doing the same job. Yeah, we're looking forward to this next game, and it's good that we have played our first game, and the results obviously didn't go our way, but there's lots of positives that we can take from that, the first game we played.

Q. You have seen the ground over here, and considering how small it is, are you planning any change in your combination? Are you planning to have an extra batsman or anything of that sort?
ELTON CHIGUMBURA: No, we just have to make sure that we improve on things that we didn't do from the first game. I think that's the most important thing when it comes to our team because our team is quite balanced when it comes to batting and bowling. Just polishing up where we went wrong in the first game.

Q. A lot of the games in this tournament have been very high scoring, 300 plus very often. Does that make it easier or harder for the side?
ELTON CHIGUMBURA: I think because of the grounds are smaller, so obviously it's going to be a high‑scoring game. It's just a matter of staying in the game longer, and that way, whether you're setting or you're chasing, you have a better chance of scoring those big scores.

Q. What have you guys done after the adversities against Bangladesh? What has made this turnaround as we saw in the match against South Africa?
ELTON CHIGUMBURA: For us obviously in Bangladesh it wasn't good. We tried to put that aside and focus on what is happening now, and also the conditions here. They're very different from Bangladesh. They are good wickets here. They don't turn much. Our focus since we came here, we have been playing good cricket, so we just need to carry on the way we are doing and try and forget about the negative that happened in Bangladesh.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297