I agree with you, even though Zimbabwe lost the match against Sri Lanka yesterday, Zimbabwe played very well as a weak side. Despite playing at Sri Lanka's home ground and being a strong team, they did not play well in comparison. All the teams always play well at their home ground but the Sri Lankan team had to work hard to win against a weak team like Zimbabwe at their home ground. And playing the balls of the bowlers of the Zimbabwean team, the players of the strong Sri Lankan team were quite disoriented. Ngaravar's bowling of Zimbabwe team was able to blow away the batsmen of Sri Lankan team with ease. Sri Lanka won by two wickets in the second ODI yesterday, it was not an easy win for Sri Lanka.
Rather than any improvement from Zimbabwe, it just points to decline in overall performance from Sri Lanka. And they have been performing pathetically in ODI cricket recently. Remember the Asia Cup final? They got bowled out for just 50 runs against India. And then in the ODI World Cup of 2023, they got bowled out for just 55 runs against the same opposition and then lost the match by a massive 302 runs. Now they are struggling against Zimbabwe. Something is really wrong with Sri Lanka cricket. I am not very hopeful for their long-term future.
I agree with you. Zimbabwe is not that good of a team as an opponent. They have been performing very badly and they even failed to qualify from the African region in the T20 World Cup where the teams are not that good. It is very disappointing for Zimbabwe if you ask me. And now Sri Lanka are playing against them and the match which was finished went so close. The performance has been in decline for Sri Lanka. I don't think they can do much in the upcoming T20 World Cup.
I think they are wasting their time playing with Zimbabwe though. They need to find better opponents to challenge themselves. Because any team other than Zimbabwe would have won the matches if they were to perform like that.