Afghanistan's tour of Zimbabwe to begin from 16th of February

Zimbabwe Cricket (ZC) announced the Afghanistan team’s tour of Zimbabwe. They will be hosting a five-match One-Day International (ODI) series after last hosting an ODI during the tri-series with Sri Lanka and West Indies. Zimbabwe are supposed to tour Sri Lanka later in the year and this will be a good test for them.

They last played in November in the tri-series and were to travel to Sri Lanka after a gap of 6 months between any competitive match. On the other hand, Afghanistan will fly to the African country with all the confidence after winning the Desert T20 trophy where a total of eight teams participated.

Zimbabwe needs to up their game as they have lost eight of their last 14 ODIs. Both the sides last met during the World T20 championship held in India last year. The match saw Afghanistan getting better of Zimbabwe. The Afghans batted beautifully and scored a humongous 186 in 20 overs while the Zimbabwe only managed 127 in their response.

The hosts will be looking to improve their record as the head to head statistics are not in their favor. Afghanistan will try and emphasize on the same and will look to win the series with all the statistical advantage.

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The ODI series kick starts from 16th of February and will come to an end on 26th of February. All the matches will be played in a very short span, some of the ODI’s only have a day in between. After some rescheduling, Afghanistan is supposed to land in Zimbabwe on 13th of February.

Before the actual ODI series takes place there will also be a five match series between Zimbabwe A and Afghanistan A. The series commences from 27th of January in Harare. Afghanistan last played an ODI in October last year but will still back themselves to beat their opponent having done that quite comprehensively in the past.