New Delhi: Unshackled by expectations or hype, New Zealand have coasted into the semifinals of the ICC World Twenty20 with an all-win record, and will look to extend that run against England at the Kotla here on Wednesday.
Handed the worst schedule of the 10 participating teams in the Super 10 stage — New Zealand played their league games in Nagpur, Dharamsala, Mohali and Kolkata with their warm-up games at Mumbai — Kane Williamson’s team have taken the incessant travel with a combination of humour and resignation. The focus, as the results have shown, has always been on the cricket.
“It’s great that we have been able to see more of India than most of the others,” a smiling Williamson said on Tuesday. “It’s one of those things. Guys embraced that. They embraced the flights and embraced the variety of hotels.” That is as may be. What they certainly have embraced is a calm determination and focus on the job at hand. On varying tracks, the Kiwis have gone about their cricket in typically low-key, yet ruthless fashion, as hosts and pre-tournament favourites India were witness to at Nagpur.
For their part, England, playing their third game in a row at the Kotla, will feel much more at home. The Lions have produced an uneven set of performances, scrambling home by 10 runs in the crucial game against Sri Lanka three days ago, and are banking on familiarity to upset the Black Caps.
“It’s a home game even if we are in India,” quipped England allrounder Ben Stokes on match eve. “We are a little bit more used to the conditions,”
New Zealand have used spin to great effect in their campaign here. Tournament leader Mitchell Santner (nine wickets) and Ish Sodhi (eight) have delivered in style to defend whatever their batsmen have posted, and England know they have to unravel this particular puzzle if they are to push on and into the final.
To that end, England are looking at lead batsman Joe Root to show the way. “He is a class player and one of the best around in all three formats of the game at the moment,” said Stokes of his teammate. As is the case in many such battles, this semifinal will also be a mini-showdown between Root and Williamson, two of modern day cricket’s finest young batsmen, alongside Virat Kohli.
All three are in their twenties, and the fact that two of them are facing off here offers a mouth-watering contest, even if the Black Caps’ captain has not exactly set the tournament on fire with his aggregate of 91 runs from four games. Only Kohli among all the batsmen in the semifinals, has scored more runs than Root’s 168, which included a match-winning 83 against South Africa. And when he did not deliver with the bat, Root was in the thick of the action on the field.
