Sanjeev Kumar
khelja|22-10-2025
Zimbabwe won the match by an innings. (Photo- Gareth Copley/Getty Images)
The only test match between the teams of Zimbabwe and Afghanistan was played at Harare Sports Club. The Zimbabwean team won this match in just 3 days. The special thing was that Zimbabwe defeated Afghanistan by an innings margin and ended the years-long wait. The heroes of this historic victory were Ben Curran, Brad Evans and Richard Ngarava. These players showed a wonderful game.
At the beginning of this match, Zimbabwe won the toss and decided to bowl first, which proved to be correct. He bundled out Afghanistan's first innings for just 127 runs. During this, Brad Evans took 5 wickets. In response, amazing batting was seen from Zimbabwe. He scored 359 runs in his first innings. Which included Ben Curran's memorable innings. Ben Curran played an innings of 121 runs in 256 balls. Which was the first century for Zimbabwe in the last 8 years by an opener in a home test.
But, the Afghanistan team could not do anything special in the second innings also. Afghanistan collapsed after scoring 159 runs in its second innings. The reason for this was Richard Nagarwa, who took 5 wickets for 37 runs. Whereas, Blessing Muzarabani managed to take 3 wickets. Tanaka Chiwanga also made 2 batsmen his victims. Due to which Zimbabwe team was successful in winning this match by an innings and 73 runs.
With this, Zimbabwe won the Test match by an innings margin after 24 years. Earlier in 2001, Zimbabwe had defeated Bangladesh by an innings margin. At the same time, the Zimbabwe team also achieved the feat of winning a test match at home after 12 years. For this memorable victory, Ben Curran was chosen Player of the Match, who touched the 100-run mark for the first time in his Test career.