Every team wants to be the one that’s spoken of as era-defining; the one that is expected to lift World Cups, but New Zealand aren’t that team
Karthik Krishnaswamy03-Nov-2023You probably remember every twist of fate that befell New Zealand at Lord’s on July 14, 2019. If you’re a fan, the cosmic unfairness of that World Cup final is probably still with you, a colourless, odourless substance that burns your nostrils every time you breathe.Plucky New Zealand, unlucky New Zealand.You might not recall quite so vividly, though, all the luck that New Zealand enjoyed on their way to that final – or, indeed, the semi-finals. Their only wins in the league stage came against teams that ended up with fewer points than them – including three tight finishes that could have gone the other way – and they lost, by comfortable margins, to England and Australia, who finished above them, and to Pakistan, who ended up with the same points total. Their match against India, the table-toppers, was washed out. Pakistan had a washout too, but they might have had reason to view it as a point dropped against Sri Lanka rather than one gained.Plucky New Zealand, lucky New Zealand.Four years on, there’s a certain sense of déjà vu to how their World Cup campaign is unfolding. They began with a thumping win over England, when it wasn’t yet clear how bad England were, and then beat three teams they were expected to beat: Netherlands, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.Related
Trent Boult: A World Cup great who isn't having a great World Cup
New Zealand wait on injured players ahead of high-stakes contest against Pakistan
Henry ruled out of World Cup, Jamieson named replacement
Time for ICC to overhaul 15-man squad limit amid spate of injuries
What are New Zealand's semi-final chances looking like after three losses?
The schedule, so kind to New Zealand until this point, then threw in their path, one after another, the tournament’s Big Three: India, Australia and South Africa. They lost all three games, along the way plunging ever deeper into an injury crisis, and now find themselves in another battle for fourth place, with Pakistan once again their nearest rivals.How good are New Zealand, then? Are they, as they appeared to be in the early weeks of this tournament, a title contender? Are they, as they have seemed since then, a merely above-average team who can’t match the quantity of outright match-winners who pepper the top three teams’ line-ups?The answer? Yes.Every team wants to be the one that’s spoken of as era-defining; the one that is expected to lift World Cups as a birthright; the one who, by not winning, exposes the flaws in the tournament’s design. New Zealand aren’t that team.You don’t have to be that team. In a tournament like this one, you can be the fourth-best team, closer in overall quality to the team in fifth than the one in third, and still go on to win the thing – or come within inches of doing so.New Zealand are happy to be the fourth-best team. In a way, they almost seem to welcome it. They’ve reached far too many World Cup finals over the last eight years to be considered anything other than world-class, but the fact that there are usually one or two teams who happen to be just a little bit better than them, man for man, or just a little bit more radical, tactically, almost gives them the license to play up the plucky underdog stereotype that they outgrew years ago.On Friday on the eve of New Zealand’s match against Pakistan at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium, it was revealing just how often Daryl Mitchell peppered his press conference with allusions to a uniquely New Zealand way of playing cricket.Despite some brilliant fielding, New Zealand have dropped 16 catches so far, highest for a team in this competition•ICC/Getty ImagesInevitably, he was asked to elaborate on what he meant by a ‘BlackCaps’ way or ‘Kiwi’ way of playing the game.”That’s probably for you guys to work out and decide yourselves,” Mitchell said. “Look, we’re a small country, down the bottom of the earth, and for us it’s fighting for every ball, chasing every ball to the boundary, and doing the little things that we can control. The big stuff will look after itself if we’re clear on our roles, very detailed with how we go about our business, and you can work out our blueprint and our plan from that.”But yeah, we’re just very proud to represent our country and get stuck in the World Cup and you’ll see that by the passion and the way the guys throw themselves around out in the field.”Preparation, then, and desperation on the field. You’d think every team at this level ticks those boxes, but New Zealand beat them all to make it their entire identity.Mitchell’s words may be his alone, but they perhaps also reflect his team’s mentality going into Saturday’s game. New Zealand are probably aware that they’ve dropped more catches (16) than any other team in the competition so far, and that they have the fifth-worst chance conversion rate (71.4%) of any team. They probably feel that a doubling-down of stereotypically Kiwi virtues will do them no harm in their quest to reach the semi-finals.
“We’ll just keep playing like Black Caps and Kiwis do, and I’m sure we’ll come a long way to winning the game.”Daryl Mitchell, NZ allrounder
But here’s the thing. Pakistan (82.2%) have the second-best chance conversion rate in the tournament, and have dropped the second-fewest catches (8). England, desperately struggling England, have dropped even fewer (6), and have the third-best chance conversion rate (81.2%).There is no pattern here, and there usually isn’t, because – *cliche demolition klaxon* – catches really don’t win matches.Every team drops catches, and every team goes through streaks of catching everything that comes their way and streaks of letting everything slip, for no other reason than the vagaries of probability. Better bowling teams create more chances, offsetting the effects of some of them failing to stick. Good bowling stops far more runs than desperate chasing and diving do, and good batting creates far more runs than are saved on the field.It’s with ball and bat, primarily, that New Zealand will have to fight off Pakistan’s challenge on Saturday. Luck may well come into it – there is rain forecast in Bengaluru, and a washout would be entirely in New Zealand’s interests – but pluck? Every team has that.
