Sometimes, just sometimes, nice guys do finish first.These were the words Simon Doull, the former New Zealand fast bowler, used to capture the moment in which his erstwhile team won the final of the World Test Championship. The relief in his voice was obvious, as was the emotion, and you will not find too many people in the world of cricket who will challenge the assertion that Kane Williamson’s men are genuine good guys.The manner in which Williamson handled himself, with the team taking their cue from him, after they were declared second best in the 2019 50-over World Cup final, was proof positive that there was not one sore loser in that squad. For once, it was not only the winners who hogged the limelight.Equally, Williamson and his crew were all class in victory. There were no over-the-top celebrations, no putting down of the vanquished. Just a moment of joy in the warm embrace of success.But, to reduce New Zealand to clichés about good guys does not do them justice. Over the course of six rain-interrupted days, they showed how much they had grown as a team in the two years that spanned the World Test Championship.In Devon Conway and Tom Latham they had two openers who had grown up in seam- and swing-friendly conditions in New Zealand, and as result developed a technique that worked in Test cricket. Williamson and Ross Taylor, two giants from the New Zealand school of batting, oozed skill and composure, marrying experience with obvious talent and hard work. In Colin de Grandhomme and Kyle Jamieson they had two all-rounders to balance the playing 11, at a time when India cannot find one fit fast bowling all-rounder from a billion-plus population.Trent Boult and Tim Southee form an opening bowling pair that is more likely than any other in operation today to provide the early breakthrough. As for Neil Wagner, he can be enforcer or work horse, banging it in short with unerring accuracy or hammering away at a length and drying the runs up.The New Zealand team that played India in the final literally did not have one weak link. While it must be conceded that the conditions favoured their style of bowling, equal credit must be given to the think-tank for the manner in which they assessed the conditions and picked an 11 that would give them the best chance of succeeding.It is here that credit must be given to New Zealand. While it is charming that the least populous major cricketing nation punches above its weight routinely, Williamson and his team should not be reduced to a mere cliché. If anything, their success is proof that having unlimited resources is not the be all and end all in life. What you do with what you have counts for so much more.It is also worth remembering that New Zealand have had the smallest turnover of Test players in the period that built up to the World Test Championship final. What this tells you is that those that run the game in the country had a clear vision of which personnel would do the job and then persisted with them, allowing them to grow as individuals and into interlocking pieces where the sum of the parts was larger than the whole.The fact that they do not cuss and growl on the field does not make this New Zealand team any less fierce than the opposition they come up against. If anything, this is a template for other countries to follow, putting the actual skills of the game front and centre, and focusing on that to the exclusion of all else. At the end of the day, cricket is not about 11 individuals doing the best they can. It is a team game, and New Zealand epitomise this.
from Economic Times https://ift.tt/3A3NjKI
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