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The Black Caps are a truly complete team
Lindsay Amner
Roar Guru
25th March, 2015
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Brendon McCullum was - is - a leader of men. (AFP PHOTO / MARTY MELVILLE)
Lindsay Amner
Roar Guru
25th March, 2015
6

The current New Zealand cricket team are showing the sort of batting form we used to see from the great Australian sides of the 1990s and 2000s.

In the Australian team in those days, if one or two batsmen failed there was always another who would take up his bat and succeed. The team was never reliant on one individual for success.

The same is true of the current New Zealand team, as shown by the results throughout the World Cup.

In the first game against Sri Lanka, the first three batsmen all scored 49 or more and the innings was brought home by Corey Anderson’s 75. A big total of 331 got the tournament off to a great start.

Against England, first Tim Southee destroyed the Poms’ batting, and then Brendon McCullum with 87 made sure the small total was brushed aside with disdain.

Playing Australia, Trent Boult was the destroyer with the ball, followed by another quickfire 50 from McCullum and Kane Williamson seeing them home with his nerveless 45, including the six that won the match when all looked lost.

As a potential banana skin loomed against Bangladesh, with the two stars McCullum and Williamson gone cheaply, it was Martin Guptill’s time to step up with a polished 105 to save the match, helped along by Ross Taylor’s tidy 56.

Then who could forget Guptill’s 237 quarter-final heroics against the West Indies; the highest score ever in a World Cup match, again paced nicely by Taylor.

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At this point the only batsman not to have made a major contribution was Grant Elliot. He had not been called on to bat often and had got useful starts each time but had yet to pass 50. So when the semi-final against South Africa was slipping away, the mark of a great side showed itself again and a batsman stepped up as required.

Elliot’s steady pacing of the innings for 84, finished by his six off the penultimate ball, was masterful and desperately needed by the New Zealanders.

Daniel Vettori has simply been Daniel Vettori; ageless, tongue out, understated and nonchalant, doing whatever job is required with skill and élan, whether slowing Australia’s rampant run chase with pinpoint bowling, getting bat on ball and running desperate byes to get Elliot on strike, or athletically leaping to take a screamer of a catch on the boundary.

The tournament statistics feature the New Zealanders prominently and again show the high level of current performance across the team.

In the bowling department, three New Zealanders – Boult, Southee and Vettori – are in the top-ten wicket takers for the tournament, with Boult the leading wicket taker, while Southee has the best individual figures. These three and Corey Anderson are all in the top 15 best bowling averages for the tournament.

In the batting department, Guptill has the highest individual score of the tournament and only needs 10 runs in the final to overhaul Kumar Sangakkara as the tournament’s leading scorer. Brendon McCullum has the best strikerate of 191.81 with Luke Ronchi in ninth spot.

Never before has a New Zealand team had such balance across every aspect of play and been able to recover so regularly from the loss of its best players early in an innings.

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So win or lose the final, this is the best New Zealand ODI team ever. Hopefully we will be remembering them as World Cup champions.

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