{"id":417286,"date":"2026-02-10T03:35:13","date_gmt":"2026-02-10T03:35:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/417286\/"},"modified":"2026-02-10T03:35:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T03:35:13","slug":"t20-world-cup-south-africa-make-imposing-start-after-zimbabwe-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/417286\/","title":{"rendered":"T20 World Cup: South Africa make imposing start after Zimbabwe win"},"content":{"rendered":"

Earlier, Zimbabwe opened their campaign with a comfortable eight-wicket win over Oman thanks to an unbeaten 48 from Brian Bennett.<\/p>\n

Oman struggled with the pace and bounce of Zimbabwe’s attack at the Sinhalese Sports Club in Colombo as they were knocked over for 103.<\/p>\n

Blessing Muzarabani blew away the associate nation’s top order with 3-16 and at 27-5, Oman were in danger of being bowled out for fewer than their lowest total in World Cups – 47 against England at North Sound in 2024.<\/a><\/p>\n

But a 44-run stand between Sufyan Mehmood and Vinayak Shukla at least added some respectability to the scorecard for Oman, who are ranked 20th in the world.<\/p>\n

Shukla top-scored with 28 off 21 balls while Mehmood ground out 25 off 39 deliveries as they were two of only three Oman players to make it into double figures<\/p>\n

The other was Nadeem Khan, who hit their only six of the innings, en route to an 18-ball 20 before he was dismissed by superb diving catch in the deep by Bennett.<\/p>\n

Richard Ngarava and Brad Evans finished with 3-17 and 3-18 respectively for the the Chevrons.<\/p>\n

Zimbabwe, who failed to qualify for the last World Cup, made relatively light work of the run chase as they knocked off the total in 13.3 overs.<\/p>\n

Mehmood winkled out Tadiwanashe Marumani and Dion Myers in the same over – the second on review after a superb catch by wicketkeeper Shukla – to cause Zimbabwe a few nerves at 30-2.<\/p>\n

But Oman were unable to make any further inroads as opener Bennett hit seven fours during a fluent knock off 36 balls.<\/p>\n

The only sour point for Zimbabwe was when Brendan Taylor pulled up with a hamstring injury and had to retire hurt on 31 leaving skipper Sikandar Raza to hit the winning runs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Earlier, Zimbabwe opened their campaign with a comfortable eight-wicket win over Oman thanks to an unbeaten 48 from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":417287,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-417286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-cricket","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=417286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417286\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/417287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=417286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=417286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=417286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}