Every team wanted to reach the semi‑finals, but no team wanted to end up with the task facing New Zealand, who play all‑conquering India in Mumbai on Wednesday. In the round everyone wanted to be in, it’s the game no one wanted to play: India at home, all their batters in form, their fast bowlers fantastic, the spinners superb, no weak links. But if you had to pick a team to take on this mammoth task, you might look at New Zealand.
When I played against them I was always quite envious of their mindset: they always seemed to be underdogs, but they made the most of what they had and played as if they had nothing to lose and everything to gain. England were always expected to win, and we felt that huge pressure of representing England and the expectation upon us both individually and collectively, which was not always helpful.
In 1988 I played for Middlesex in the NatWest Trophy final against Worcestershire. I was 18 and had never played in the competition before. Mike Gatting told me I was in the team about 10 minutes before the toss, and there was a blissful naivety about me. I didn’t really know what was coming, and I didn’t really understand the enormity of the occasion – I was a young player surrounded by experienced senior professionals who were expected to shoulder the burden. I just thought: “I’ll give it a crack” – and I scored a half‑century as we won the game. In the years afterwards I would often wish I could somehow recreate that attitude, and it’s one I see sometimes in the New Zealand side.
They were runners-up at the 2015 World Cup and again in 2019, and they will know better than most the enormity of this occasion. But New Zealand tend to be very good at playing for a cause that’s bigger than themselves, which can be a very strong motivator. I read the book Legacy, about the All Blacks rugby union side, and they talk about being in temporary care of the shirt: it’s not really yours, you do your best to look after it before you pass it on. I like that because it takes the pressure off the individual.
In another book, The Confidence Gap, I read about the importance of being very clear on your values, giving you understanding of how you want to play your game and confidence in yourself as a person, and I think New Zealand excel at this also. Of course they have excellent players with a high skill level, as any successful team must, but there is so much to admire in their approach. They say a pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity and an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty, and that applies quite nicely to the New Zealand team.
But there is also the lingering feeling that nice guys don’t always win, and that there is a reason they have twice come close without getting over the line. On Wednesday their methods will be tested as never before at the Wankhede, which is a real cauldron. Eden Gardens in Kolkata, where Australia play South Africa on Thursday, is a big ground in every way, the stands gently rising upwards, but at the Wankhede the stands seem to go straight up. It’s a bit like Upton Park, West Ham’s old ground, in that the crowd feels very close to you, the stands are tall and the noise seems to reverberate around the stadium. New Zealand have an experienced side, but just to control your thoughts if the game starts to spin away from you and the noise is deafening is so difficult.
They will cling to memories of 2019 when, as this year, India won the group and New Zealand came fourth, but they won the semi-final at Old Trafford. That will allow them to say to themselves: India’s nine wins are irrelevant now, because it’s a one-off game. The team batting first have won every match at the Wankhede Stadium in this tournament except one, when Australia, chasing 292 against Afghanistan, were 91 for seven and all but beaten before being rescued by Glenn Maxwell’s incredible double century, and the toss will be important.
I think New Zealand’s path to victory involves winning the toss, making a par score, and then making inroads in the powerplay with Trent Boult – who has played for Mumbai Indians in the Indian Premier League and will know the conditions well – and Tim Southee. Early wickets will be so important to silence that crowd and put India under the kind of pressure they really haven’t experienced at any stage of the tournament.
In tournaments gone by, Australia would be overwhelming favourites to come through the other semi‑final, but I think South Africa possess a team that could achieve something very special in this tournament, the ideal balance of orthodox strokeplayers, some very strong hitters in Heinrich Klaasen and David Miller, pace in their attack and two good spinners in Keshav Maharaj and Tabraiz Shamsi – on what is traditionally a slow wicket if they are brave enough to pick them both it could give them the edge. They walloped Australia towards the start of the group stage in what was almost a textbook one-day international performance, getting a big score and really putting the pressure on with the ball. The Australians have improved a lot since then, but that will be the template.
The key might be taking advantage of Australia’s fifth bowler. Adam Zampa is the leading wicket‑taker at the World Cup and the quality of the so-called Big Three of Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood, is well known. But they then need to find 10 overs from players such as Mitchell Marsh, Marcus Stoinis and Glenn Maxwell and South Africa cannot allow that to pass. Maxwell does have a really good record against Quinton de Kock – he has bowled precisely 100 balls to him in international cricket, conceded 63 runs and dismissed him five times – and though I don’t always pay a lot of attention to matchups, that kind of history is hard to ignore.
Some teams on reaching the semi‑finals may suddenly realise that, for all the success that got them here, if they get it wrong on this one day it is over, and that thought process can be hard to recover from. The real skill of knockout sport is the ability to tell yourself that whatever has gone before really doesn’t matter, and there is an opportunity out there waiting to be grasped. Perhaps, in the end, it’s the mindset that matters.
