HARARE, Aug 28: India skipper Saurav Ganguly has demanded his team bounce back from their 51-run defeat to New Zealand and take out their frustrations on hapless Zimbabwe on Monday at the Harare Sports Club.

With the Kiwis in the driving seat after also crushing the hosts by 192 runs in the opening game of the tri-nations series in Bulawayo last week, the pressure is on India’s batsmen.

They collapsed to 44-8 against New Zealand in their opening game before their pride was rescued by a ninth-wicket stand of 118 between tailenders Jai P. Yadav and Irfan Pathan.

“It takes time for a team to get used to conditions, especially the bowlers. We will just have to pick ourselves up from the floor,” said Ganguly.

“There has been something wrong with our approach. In the past Indian batsmen have scored a lot of big innings but that has not been the case over the last year. But we have addressed that and we are trying to find the answers.”

Zimbabwe scored more runs than India in getting beaten by New Zealand in Bulawayo — 205 to 164 but home skipper Tatenda Taibu refuses to set any store by that.

“We ourselves can’t do any worse than we did against New Zealand on Wednesday in Bulawayo,” said Taibu where New Zealand scored the second highest one-day score in history of 397-5.

“We were poor in all departments of the game, batting, bowling and fielding, especially the latter.

“There really is room for a lot of improvement and we have been very working very hard with (coach) Kevin Curran.

“I’m sure our failures won’t happen again when we meet India. It has been too early to judge the Indian batting, so we’ll simply take it on its merits.”

Asked whether Zimbabwe will ever reach a standard necessary to really compete at Test level, Taibu replied: “Only soccer was being played in every street just a very few years ago. Now it is cricket being played in the streets.

“The game has caught on among young people and it is just a matter of time.

“We have suffered badly from the loss of really class players like Andy Flower and Alistair Campbell. But one day we will definitely compete.”—AFP