Sikandar Raza is the Player of the Match: I thought the goundation was set by Craig, Sean and Brendan. Brendan batted with some grit, and later it was my turn to get some runs. It was better to bat then but certainly hard at the top. I wanted to run hard between the wicket and find the boundary here and there.
Craig Ervine: The first 10-15 overs were difficult to get through for batters. Brendan did the hard work and fell but the foundation was set pretty well. At the beginning we thought 250 would be a really good score, the wicket did get slightly better in the afternoon. The bowlers stuck to their plans really well. The spinners were creating a lot of dots when I batted (so we used spinners too).
That's all we have from today, do tune in again on Friday for the second ODI, when we will also have England vs India, Bangladesh vs New Zealand and Sri Lanka vs South Africa. The schedule is right here. Until then, it's goodbye and good luck from me, Vishal Dikshit, and Himanshu Agrawal.
6.23pm Handshakes all around and smiles all over the Zimbabwe players' faces as they take a 1-0 lead in the three-match ODI series. It's a convincing performance from them, fighting back after the loss in the T20Is, and they put up a good show in all four departments. That's what Ireland will be disappointed about: they bowled well in phases, especially the spinners, but leaked too much in the end, put down too many catches, they were sloppy in the field, they didn't get the run rate going in the chase despite having wickets in hand early on, and Zimbabwe even used the reviews better. We'll take you to the presentation soon...