Kiwis are team to beat, here's how: Jonty Rhodes
After couple of nail-biters involving the associates Afghanistan, Scotland, Ireland and UAE, the much-awaited World Cup clash of the Trans Tasman rivals and co-hosts at Auckland turned out to be a humdinger as well.
Australia came in to the match with a win and a shared point, while New Zealand has been a rather inhospitable co-host of the World cup 2015, knocking all of their opponents to the canvas with some ferocious blows.
Saturday’s contest however had the Kiwi batting being tested for the first time only for them to win by a whisker.
QUEER STRATEGY—BENCH NOT TESTED
The Black Caps have been adopting an interesting strategy in this tournament playing unchanged and giving their best players every opportunity to be in form, and have thus so far, forsaken the ‘rotation policy’.
The only concern with this approach is that should any of your players not be able to strike form during the first month, then the players on the bench are not getting any game time.
The World Cup still has four weeks to go and the NZ players have to be wary of not peaking too soon. Having secured the top finisher of Pool A, with matches against Afghanistan and Bangladesh to come, NZ can allow some of the bench players to get a feel of the World Cup.
However, seeing as that they have a week off before their next match, and then another five days off before their last pool match, I am expecting the same starting XI to play both matches.
Time will tell if this strategy pays dividends, or results in a team running on empty towards the final stages.
TAKING ON THE NZ 5TH BOWLER
Batting against New Zealand has proven to be problematic in two areas—the new ball pairing is getting the ball to swing making early inroads, and if the opening bowlers get a bit of a pasting, the wily bowling of Dan Vettori is tightening things back.
Tim Southee has bowled with great control and just enough swing to ensure that batsmen play down the wrong line, while Trent Boult has charged in, bowling with great speed, but a little less consistency with both line and swing.
However, this unpredictable nature of his bowling has seen Boult pick up many wickets with batsmen never sure if the ball is going to swing or not.
The key to putting the Black Caps under pressure is to see off the new ball and work the accurate Vettori into gaps taking little risk.
It’s at this stage, due to early wickets falling, or the middle order collapse like the English and the Aussies had, the fifth bowler in the Kiwi lineup has not yet been exposed.
It also means that the frontline bowlers are doing their job, by taking wickets, but Grant Elliott and Corey Anderson are not getting to bowl in pressure situations in the buildup to the knockout stage.
Teams preparing for future matches against NZ will try and ensure that they have wickets in hand by the 30th over, and then put the rest of the bowling attack under some pressure.
CURTAIL THE AGGRESSIVE STARTS
Another area that has ensured that New Zealand is sitting alone atop of Pool A has been the aggressive approach by skipper Brendon McCullum in his batting.
When he scores runs, he is doing at an incredible strike rate, which means that Martin Guptill doesn’t have to take too many risks at the other end.
It allows Kane Williamson some breathing space when he first gets to the crease, and we have seen that he is difficult to dislodge once set.
However, I think that if you can remove McCullum in the first couple of overs, and he is always going to give you opportunities, then pressure will be on Guptill (who is not in the best form) and another vital cog in their batting, Ross Taylor.
This will also mean that Williamson will have to shoulder much of the batting responsibility, and he might have to change the way he approaches his innings.
Anderson is another explosive batsman in their lineup, but yet to be consistent enough to be relied on to finish matches, and watching Elliot and Ronchi battle against the impressive bowling of Starc, I really believe that their batting lineup has a few chinks in its armour.
(Jonty Rhodes served South Africa with distinction in 52 Tests and 245 ODIs, with four World Cup appearances. The first fielding superstar of international cricket, the acrobatic Springbok took many miracle catches, a lot of them at backward point. He'll be writing for Yahoo! Cricket as their World Cup Expert.)
