Afghans take the biscuit
They also devour the Black Caps' soul and leave NZ's World T20 campaign hanging by a thread ($)
Afghanistan 159-6 (20)
New Zealand 75 (15.2)
What a remarkable, prolonged act of self-sabotage that was.
First, a warning: Afghanistan were excellent but Rahmanullah Gurbaz (80), Ibrahim Zadran (44), Fazalhaq Farooqi (4-17), Rashid Khan (4-17) and Mohammad Nabi (2-16) are not going to get the credit they deserve here because the focus for the next 1000 words will be on how wretched their ‘opposition’ was.
The T20I rot started for New Zealand in February when they were humbled at home by Australia.
In between that series and this opening match of the World T20, two things of significance happened: New Zealand sent an understrength team to Pakistan, while at the same time our ‘best’ T20 players went off to the IPL.
Neither campaign went as expected.
New Zealand’s leftovers scored a meritorious 2-2 series result (albeit against a team who might be even further behind T20 trends), while the IPL was a complete non-event. The eight New Zealanders combined for just 55 appearances and between them contributed a miserable 598 runs (with Daryl Mitchell accounting for more than half of them) and 34 wickets, with the evergreen Trent Boult securing 16 himself. If it wasn’t for the fact Stephen Fleming was in charge of Chennai Super Kings, where three of the Kiwis were signed, New Zealand’s involvement in the 2024 tournament might not have even registered as a footnote.
Just two of the Pakistan crew played against Afghanistan today, while seven of the eight IPLers did. The one IPLer who missed out, Rachin Ravindra, was one of the few to play regularly and despite a patchy tournament, finished it strongly.
Given the set of circumstances, who in NZ Cricket’s high-performance set-up made the call not to schedule any warm-up games?