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Zimbabwe will give their best shot: Butcher

The African country are among the outsiders to make it through their qualifying pool, with reigning champions Australia, New Zealand, Pakistan and Sri Lanka more fancied to progress to the quarter-finals.

Butcher nonetheless knows only too well that his men can be the masters of their own destiny if they excel in the vast majority of those half a dozen games.

“All I want us to concentrate on is that we’ve got six matches that we’ve definitely got to play and, if we can come out of five of those with the feeling we’ve played as good as we could have, that’s what I’m aiming for,” the former Surrey coach, 56, said.

“If we could do that, it would be a good achievement in itself as five out of six is a tough ask.

“It would also give us an opportunity to get the results that we might need to get through and qualify.

“I’m not targeting any particular team because we will prepare as best we can to win every game we play. I don’t understand how, if you’re going to try and prepare the best you can to play every game, I don’t know how you can target one above the other? To me, it doesn’t work like that.

“Our plan really is to approach each game as one to be won and then, if we play well and the opposition don’t, we’ve got a chance.”

Zimbabwe shall take a relatively inexperienced and young group to the Indian subcontinent later this month, with the intention that the core of it will be better placed to challenge come 2015 in Australia and New Zealand.

“We’re looking towards the future,” Butcher admitted. “We’re picking a mixture of who we think are the best players right now, as well as ones who we think are going to get us into a position where we’ll be a much more experienced team in two or three years’ time.

“The players will be better and, therefore, more able to compete with more teams across the board.”

He added: “You could well say that this World Cup is perhaps not our time. But, if we can keep this group of players together, that’ll be an experienced group of players in four years’ time.

“They’re definitely talented and, in four years’ time, you would hope they’d be in a position to cause major upsets in that competition.”

One development that will help the players’ progression is the ICC’s green light for Zimbabwe to resume playing Test matches, with Bangladesh penciled in for a showdown in Harare this August. “That will be massive over a period of time,” Butcher enthused. “We’ve already got two or three series scheduled, each with a Test match and ODIs, and to compete again in Test cricket against the top nations will be huge for Zimbabwe cricket.”

alex@khaleejtimes.com