While both sides are smarting from comprehensive drubbing at the hands of former champions, Canada provide Zimbabwe with one of their few realistic victory opportunities in the tournament when they square off in Nagpur.

Zimbabwe's spinners did a decent job against Australia, restricting the four-times champions to 262 for six. But their batting frailties, in the face of Australia's strong pace attack, were evident as they collapsed to 171 all out in Ahmedabad.

Brendan Taylor and Charles Coventry could not provide a decent start and the middle order also capitulated meekly against the pace of Brett Lee, Shaun Tait and Mitchell Johnson.

The Zimbabweans, however, can look forward to a much easier outing against a Canada side which has been pummelled by 210 runs by Sri Lanka at Hambantota, providing ammunitions to those wondering what business associate teams have being in the World Cup.

Canada's top order showed considerable vulnerability against Sri Lankan attack and they would struggle to break loose against the stifling brand of spin bowling produced by Ray Price and Prosper Utseya.

Zimbabwe will hardly have anything to complain about regarding their spin attack, which was let down by a brittle batting order.

"I thought we restricted them to the score we wanted to chase but we have to work on our batting," skipper Elton Chigumbura rued after the defeat by Australia.

"The fifth bowler is something we have to work on as well."

Canada have their batting problems too.

Captain Ashish Bagai and their Pakistan-born batsman Rizwan Cheema, who has a 100-plus strike rate, need to fire.

Coach Pubudu Dassanayake highlighted their problems succinctly after the drubbing by Sri Lanka.

"We have the plans but we don't have the resources to execute them," he said.

"We have got some talented players but they are not exposed to this level. You can certainly coach them but it's all about going out and executing that."