YOU have to admire the plucky Zimbabweans. After the mauling from Chris Gayle, one would have thought that their spirit would have been broken and the team would fold up in double quick time chasing a daunting 373 (revised to 363 after a brief spell of rain), but they made a real fist of it.

Victory obviously was beyond them, more so after losing two early wickets. But that Zimbabwe could score 289 speaks of not just depth in batting, but more importantly their ambition: they haven’t come to the World Cup to just make up the numbers; they are serious competitors.

Defeats to South Africa and West Indies have not made them lose heart; nor indeed have stymied their prospects in this tournament completely. In both matches against tough opponents, Zimbabwe have kept their net run-rate impressive.

This means other teams in Pool B can hardly afford to relax. While India with two wins are more or less secure of a place in the quarter-final, Pakistan, West Indies and even South Africa are still under threat of being bumped off and have some testing times ahead.

Interestingly, the more competitive matches in this World Cup have involved all featured lesser-fancied teams. Ireland, as mentioned, beat the West Indies, Zimbabwe made South Africa and West Indies toil, and in turn were almost upset by UAE. Sri Lanka scraped through heart-stoppingly against Afghanistan, and Scotland gave New Zealand some anxious moments.

In contrast, matches featuring big teams, for all the hype surrounding them, were completely one-sided. Pakistan and South Africa both crumbled against India, as did England against Australia and New Zealand.

Ten days after the tournament began, a humdinger, a pulsating last over finish — which is what makes limited overs cricket so thrilling to watch — is yet to come. Perhaps it will as the tournament progresses, players calm their nerves and teams settle down.

Given the high profile of the event and the hoopla around it — what with social media raising the decibel level to fever pitch — players have been under enormous pressure. This comes with the turf, of course, and only the most hardy can cope with it quickly or adequately.

I suspect there will be quite a few touted as heroes who will finish as zeroes and vice versa. Cricket is a game fraught with uncertainties, as we all know. But it can get really cruel when the stage and the occasion gets bigger.

One player who’s been able to make a swift turnaround in fortune is, of course, Chris Gayle. In West Indies’s earlier two matches, he looked stiff, virtually immobile and badly out of sorts. So much so that he drew flak even from the president of the West Indies Cricket Board Dave Cameron, who retweeted an unhappy fan’s jibe whether Gayle should not have been given a retirement package.

Whether it was this taunt that transformed Gayle is not quite clear, though this is the most likely. It is always dangerous to undermine a great player, even if you have a running feud with him. You never know how strongly he will react.

The West Indies Players Association lodged an official protest against their president, in itself an extraordinary development, but the most telling response came from the Gayle’s bat. The hapless Zimbabwe bowlers were sent scurrying for cover, though I reckon Gayle’s real target was the WICB president.

Whichever way one sees it, the net result of the controversy was the first double century in World Cup history. I dare say, though, this wont be the last given how bats and batsmen have progressed in the past decade.

Indeed, there could be another double century coming up in this tournament itself – perhaps most likely from Gayle himself!

The writer is a former Sports Editor of Times of India and a leading cricket analyst

Published in Dawn, February 25th, 2015

On a mobile phone? Get the Dawn Mobile App: Apple Store | Google Play