Image Credit- ICC
New Zealand’s World Cup campaign thus far has been
ordinary in the grand scheme of things. Despite injuries, they have used their
resources to the fullest, performed admirably in the games they were supposed
to win, and won one of the four close games. They ran very good teams close in
two of the three losses.
But in two of those losses, New Zealand failed to take
the actions you would expect them to take each and every time. In Dharamsala,
there were undeserved hits and missed opportunities against Australia; in Pune,
there were even more against South Africa. One of the more adept observers of
circumstances, making them capable of making decisions at the toss, New Zealand
received some criticism for not making South Africa do what they don’t like to
do: chase.
With five of its fifteen players hurt at night’s end,
New Zealand is battered and wounded, but they are determined not to give up
because they still have two games left that, given their current form, they
should be expected to win: against Pakistan and Sri Lanka. They have a good
chance of advancing to the semifinals if they win even one of these.
First off, neither Glenn Phillips at the press
conference nor captain Tom Latham at the post-match presentation regretted
their choice to include South Africa. According to Latham, he would have
continued to pursue if given the opportunity to relive that day.
“At the end of the day, we chose to do a toss
what we thought was best on this pitch with the information that’s been
given,” Phillips said. “And that’s what we go by every game.
Obviously South Africa are incredibly strong batting first, but we’ve got an
incredibly good bowling line-up and there was no reason that we couldn’t have
restricted them to a total that could have been a lot easier to chase on there.
Playing on at the end, I definitely thought it got better as well. So, I think had
things gone slightly differently, we could definitely have come a lot closer
than we did today.
“We definitely recognised that they were playing
the style of cricket that they wanted to play. But obviously, when any team
tries to accelerate, you get opportunities. Obviously, Quinton [de Kock] had a
little bit of luck today as well, which helps. And sometimes you need that as a
batter. And then when that luck goes your way, the runs start to flow, things
start to move a little bit, and once momentum starts changing, it’s hard to
bring it back. So, a couple of things go to hand today. Maybe it looks slightly
different.”