Be prepared
Black Caps go all boy scout-y in fine start to World Cup, while The Bounce goes into Road Warrior mode.
AFG 182 for 6
NZ 183 for 5 (17.5 overs)
At the very least, the Ghosts of Guyana have been exorcised.
It was at this stage two years ago that hubris appeared to catch up with the Black Caps, when they turned up piecemeal to the Caribbean at times of their own convenience and then crashed to Afghanistan in Providence by 84 runs.
By the time they had asked, “What the hell happened there?”, they were beaten by the West Indies in Trinidad and their World Cup campaign was effectively over after 75 overs of cricket.
This time they came prepared. Five mostly unsuccessful T20s across India might have exposed a few shortcomings in New Zealand’s shortest-format game, but it also exposed the bulk of the team to the types of conditions they will face over the next few weeks.
Funnily enough, the preparation showed.
Mitchell Santner, who played five mostly bit-part IPL seasons at Chennai before switching to Mumbai, used familiarity to great effect. He was the game’s dominant figure, even if the man-of-the-match grandees said otherwise, squeezing the Afghans with four clever overs that conceded 23, then putting together a neat little red-inker after coming to the crease at a time when another quick wicket could have made things tricky.
While 0 for 23 and 17 not out don’t look like eye-popping numbers, this wasn’t an eye-popping performance from New Zealand. It was good enough, however, and after the travesties of the last T20 World Cup campaign, that’ll do nicely for starters.
Some other points of interest from the opener, loosely in order:
