Zimbabwe captain Sikandar Raza wants his team to go beyond their historic win against the 2024 T20 World Cup champions in the first match of their five-match T20I series on July 6, and do the same brilliance for the upcoming matches as well. Zimbabwe stunned a new and younger Indian side under the captaincy of Shubman Gill, with some brilliant bowling performances from the likes of Raza and Tendai Chatara.

However, Raza and his bowlers were able to defend 115 runs as India were bowled out for just 102 runs in 19.5 overs and India suffered their first T20I loss of the year as well. Sikandar Raza and Tendai Chatara claimed 3 wickets each and Clive Madande’s late blitz helped secure the win as well. This new era of the Indian team, featuring debutants like Abhishek Sharma, Riyan Parag and Dhruv Jurel, failed to maintain their Indian Premier League (IPL) flair and had a poor outing.

Speaking at the post-match presentation, Raza said, ” I feel really happy about the win. We need to take one game at a time. The job is not done, the series is not over. World champions play like world champions so we need to be ready for the next game. This isn’t a wicket where you get bowled out for 115. Credit to the bowlers of both sides. Clearly an indication we need to up our skills.”

Zimbabwe win the first T20I by 13 runs 🎉 #ZIMvIND pic.twitter.com/cy88BNqogL

— Zimbabwe Cricket (@ZimCricketv) July 6, 2024

” I said I don’t care about the result as long as we could be true to the crowd and changing room, we had our plans, we stuck to it and we backed our guys. Our catching and ground fielding was amazing but we did make some errors, which shows there’s room for improvement. We knew the fans would lift us up and give us energy. Credit to them. It helped us,” Raza further added.

Although India was overall disappointing in the first match, the young side will try to bounce back in the very next game on July 7.