It can’t ever be that easy to reflect on a positive when you end up on the losing side. More so, when you find yourself on the wrong end of a result in the first game of a series, right? But then again, what’s life without taking some positives. And where the first unofficial ODI between the Thailand women and their hosts, Zimbabwe was concerned, then there was one glaring positive that you wouldn’t turn a blind eye to. Her name- Chandia Sutthiruang.
Her contribution? 55 of her team’s 199 first-inning runs that didn’t prove that hard for Mary-Anne Musonda-led Zimbabwean side to chase down eventually.
But that one of Thailand women’s important assets in the line-up, Chanida Sutthiruang scored a fourth of her team’s runs, against an opponent she had pretty much no prior experience of facing was a positive akin to spotting a lotus blooming amid the mud.
It was there for everyone to see. It was hard to turn a blind eye to.
Why Thailand women didn’t make Chanida Sutthiruang bowl, the first-ever Thailand cricketer to claim a hat-trick, is something that one cannot answer or gather a lot of sense from, though what must be said is that the right-handed batter did what was required of her.
And that’s when she walked into bat at the Takashinga Sports Club in Harare in the most unfriendliest of circumstances, her team’s top order having crashed like a boat amid volatile seas.
Never looking comfortable against a bowling attack featuring left-arm seamer Sibanda generating a great angle on a difficult-to-bat pitch, the Thai batters looked in a precarious situation losing the first wicket for 6 inside the second over. The next wicket to fall would be in the middle of the 5th over, Liengprasert and Boochatham both back in the hut.
Chantham didn’t last any long, her painfully long ordeal lasting for no fewer than five and a half overs yielding just 6 runs. That’s a batter averaging 23 in the game’s shortest form with 3 fifties.
But then came Chanida Sutthiruang to give her captain Naruemol Chaiwai. What’d follow next would be a 103 run stand in the lower order, the fifth-wicket stand reviving Thailand’s woeful fortunes.
Truth be told, somewhere Zimbabwe, who’d until such time tightened the noose around the visitor’s neck would surely have wondered about how to get the duo dislodged.
While Chaiwai was patient and played every ball to her merit, scoring a captain’s knock of 67 off 120, her 145-minute stay indicating the need to exercise caution, Chanida Sutthiruang was the one in an aggressive mood, having made up her mind to go after the likes of medium pacers- Tshuma and Mbofana.
28 of her 55 runs came by way of hits to the fence, which meant 7 gorgeous boundaries of her unbeaten fifty, a first in an ODI career that’s finally begun for the acclaimed T20 specialist.
At the heart of a stubborn Thai resistance to a potent Zimbabwean attack that was nicely mixing it up against an opponent who had little idea of the conditions, it was nice to see Chanida Sutthiruang showing application and confidence where there certainly was dearth of it on the part of her compatriots.
But with Zimbabwe having taken an early lead into the important 4-match ODI series, it remains to be seen whether Thailand can bounce back?
What’ll be important from the point of view of the Chaiwai-led outfit would be to see whether the bright 28-year-old talent can continue to build on her all round game that’s beginning to show merit in conditions that bear anything but the familiarity of her home.
Moreover, what’d be lovely would be to see the dogged batsman known for her penchant to score heavily on the off side get a chance to roll her arm over.
Keep batting Chanida, the runs will keep coming.
