“Extremely one-sided” Sharjah pitch made result difficult: Sammons
SHARJAH – Zimbabwe head coach Justin Sammons says the pitch for the first Test against Afghanistan gave bowlers almost nothing. He also singled out 20-year-old seamer Newman Nyamhuri’s five-wicket haul as something special.
The match was drawn after producing 1,541 runs and seven centuries. Only 25 wickets fell in five days.
“Certainly nothing in it for the seam, no pace in it, no bounce, no lateral movement, hardly any rough was created,” Sammons said. “We thought the wicket would deteriorate over the five days. It didn’t. It almost got better.”
“It didn’t offer massive amounts of turn, so it was really, very, very one-sided wicket. Extremely difficult to get a result on that wicket, unfortunately.”
Against that backdrop, Nyamhuri took five for 82 in Afghanistan’s first innings, his first five-wicket haul in Test cricket.
“Newman with the ball in their first innings to pick up five on that wicket as a seamer is something special,” Sammons said. “And the effort all the bowlers put in was amazing to see, because the wicket really was extremely one-sided, very, very difficult to get anything out of it with the ball.”
Sammons also praised Brian Bennett, who scored 128 and 58 in his first Test as captain.
“To score 100 in your first game as captain, he really stood up to the plate there, and that was brilliant to see,” he said.
The second Test, the final match of Zimbabwe’s month-long tour of the United Arab Emirates, starts in Sharjah on Friday. For the African side, co-hosts of next year’s World Cup, it is a last chance on the tour to beat Afghanistan.
