Michael Bracewell: 'Kiwi ingenuity is a real thing. You find a way and everyone mucks in'

There are so many New Zealand cricketers and Plunket Shield cricketers from the Bracewell family. What was it like to grow up around all that?
Yeah, I think it was inspiring to know that your family members have played for New Zealand. For me, it was an interesting one. I grew up down in Dunedin which is quite far from the rest of my family. All the rest of my family were up north.

We saw them for Christmas holidays or school holidays every now and again, but we were kind of removed from the family in many respects. I have a brother and sister, and we played a lot of backyard cricket and rugby and things like that. Dad [Mark Bracewell] was a school teacher, so he coached our First XI and First XV (rugby) teams.

I idolised my dad growing up and he taught me a lot of the values of how he thought the game should be played. That's probably the most inspirational part for me - he instilled the right way to play cricket, and sport in general.

There must have been some epic backyard cricket games when you all got together for Christmas - some crazy ones where so many people who had played for New Zealand were involved…
I think we came together very rarely as a family but when we did, sport was obviously what brought us close. We played a lot of forceback which is a rugby-kicking game. Cricket battles were particularly intense. One thing we all like to do is be competitive and I think that shines through when you watch any of us play.

We like to play as part of a team and really compete as a team. That's one thing that as a family we pride ourselves on as being good team-mates and trying our best for the team. I guess that comes from a love of rugby and cricket.

Every good backyard cricket game has one or two people who never think they're out, who think that everything that hits the legs are lbws. Who were those kinds of people in your big family games?
I think my brother and I used to have some really good battles. We would always end in a fight at some point around a dubious lbw decision or caught behind. I swear that I used to walk when I hit it, but he would argue on the contrary.

They were great games. He's three years older than me, so he was always challenging me and a lot more skilful than I was and bigger than I was. I never really won many of the arguments as I was growing up.

I think part of having to deal with an umpire's decision and just getting on with it comes from those battles with my brother in the backyard.

You mentioned that your dad instilled some values about how he thought the game should be played. Could you just talk a little bit about that?
He always wanted me to play fair and hard, with a smile on my face, I think. He never pressured me to go play professional sports or anything like that. He just wanted me to enjoy it and have fun.

I think I saw a lot of other parents growing up putting a lot of pressure on their children to perform, whereas our conversations were all around did you have fun and that sort of thing. I think that for me puts sport in perspective a little bit. At the end of the day, it's just a game that we're playing and it's not life or death what we're doing. But if you can enjoy it and accept that there's going to be hard times and there's going to be good times and not try and ride the highs and lows too much then hopefully your performance will stay nice and consistent. Making sure that you're having fun and doing what you love is super important for any young kid out there.

Watching this New Zealand team over the last 10 years a lot of those values that you're talking about seem very much part of the team DNA. Did that upbringing set you up to fit into this team culture?
Absolutely. It's definitely something that we focus on as a team is not getting too high or too low and just taking it as it comes. I think Mitch Santner, in particular in this tournament, has been amazing at keeping the team nice and calm and not getting overawed by a situation, but also understanding that there's important moments and we need to try and win those moments. It's been a really enjoyable team to be a part of and I think part of the reason for that is it so closely aligns with how I enjoy playing the game as well.

We've got a special group together for this tournament and everyone's really enjoying each other's company and having a lot of fun out on the field. Part of the reason is you're having a bit of success, but I think even if we weren't having the success on the field, we'd still be having a lot of fun and enjoying each other's company anyway.

If you look at the tournament history over the last 10 years, New Zealand has had an incredible run of getting to semis and finals against what you'd say are much better-resourced teams. How do you feel those values interact with the way you guys are able to take down those oppositions?
It's almost a bit of the Kiwi way. Kiwi ingenuity is a real thing. You just try to find a way and everyone mucks in. When we shake some of the opposition's hands and you see how many support staff, they have with them it's quite overwhelming at times - the amount of people and staff that these opposition teams have.

I think that's a real strength of our group. Everyone has to muck in. You have to give someone throwdowns at the end of training when you're done to make sure that they're well prepared. I think you learn a lot about someone else's game by doing those little things. Everyone in our team is willing to help out and make sure that we're all ready to go. I think that creates a really great bond between the team.

I guess that puts us in good stead when we're in those tough situations as well. We really understand each other's game. If you've thrown balls to someone for a number of years and then you're in a tough situation and you understand their game, then you can offer them a little bit more advice than perhaps if you're relying on support staff or other people to help in those situations. I think it's actually a real strength of ours.

We're not under-resourced because we've got great coaches, but I guess everyone having to muck in and do their little bit gives us a really good understanding of each other's games.

It sounds like you're saying that there's a lot of knowledge in the way that New Zealand do things. When you're playing a better-resourced opposition, is there a hunger to learn about their game as well and to use your strategy really effectively?
I think there's no secret that we leave no stone unturned. The homework that we do and the preparation that we do leading into games is really important. The communication around how the conditions are on that game is a huge focus for us. I'm sure other teams do that as well. But for us it's trying to understand how the wicket's playing and then playing accordingly.

We've got guys who have played all around the world in different conditions. We rely heavily on guys like Kane [Williamson] and Mitch and Matt Henry to pass on their knowledge of playing in these different conditions, to help us figure out a way to particularly bowl on these surfaces. We've got a sprinkle of youth and experience throughout the batting order.

Those conversations don't stop with the batters either. We're constantly talking about how we can attack different things. I think the value of friendship-based cricket is what we're seeing in our team as well where guys have played all around the world and with and against high quality international players. You sort of pick their brains around what they're doing and then try to take that back to the New Zealand team as well.

Have there been any plans or strategies that you've come up with as a group that you can't believe worked as well as they did?
I wouldn't say they're ground-breakingly different strategies to what any other team is using. I think there's one thing having the strategy and that's having the ability to be able to execute on that strategy.

I guess Matt Henry's a really good example of that. We've obviously played on wickets in Pakistan and Dubai that aren't super seamer-friendly, but he always seems to find a way to exploit a batsman's technique or whatever it is. He just has a funny knack of picking up key wickets at key times.

I think he's one in particular that's led our bowling attack in this campaign. His ability to get the ball to move sideways off unresponsive wickets is pretty amazing. You look at the way he got Shubman Gill out in Dubai in our last game when bowlers weren't really getting a lot of movement off the wicket as one example.

You came to spin bowling fairly late in life. Did you have any advice from your uncle John or any of the Bracewell clan around making that move?
I speak quite regularly with John around bowling and the philosophy of it. I think a lot of what we talk about is how you can train to improve. I don't have the years of experience of bowling in a lot of games, so it's about how can I keep learning even when I'm at training. It's about how you can maximise your learning opportunities in any situation. That's been hugely beneficial for me. Whether it's a net session or things like that, seeing where the ball is going and understanding how different balls are played and how the ball reacts on different surfaces and just trying to learn from every moment that you can has been huge advice for me from John. He's been hugely helpful.

It's extremely unusual for New Zealand to have as many spin options in an XI. It probably never has happened in a New Zealand team. What is it like to have all these guys, Santner, Rachin Ravindra, Glenn Phillips - everybody able to contribute and have a big spin-bowling core?
It's been awesome. We bounce heaps of ideas off each other. We're all keen to keep improving and we lean on Mitch Santner a lot for that. He's obviously the most experienced and the best bowler out of us. We're all trying to pick his brains and he's done it for a number of years.

The way that he does it - he's a different style. He tends to take the pace off the ball. Glenn and I both bowl offspin but we're quite different offspinners. I'm a bit taller and get a bit more bounce whereas he brings the stumps into play a lot more. Rachin and Mitch are left-arm orthodox spinners but also very different in the way they approach things.

Even though we've got two left-arm orthodox and two offspinners, we're all very different. I think that really helps. We definitely talk a lot about what the conditions are like and what ball is hardest to hit but we also approach the game quite differently in the way that we play. We all have that batting element as well which is hugely beneficial to the balance of our side too.

Is there something specifically that you've learnt from any of the other three guys that you can point to and say I wouldn't have learnt that if it wasn't for picking this person's brain?
I've spoken to Mitch a lot about varying pace and how he does it. The subtleties of that is one thing that sets him apart in world cricket. His ability to change his pace without changing his action at all - it's just in the subtleties of his wrist and I think that's something that I've learnt from, trying to be a bit more unpredictable.

Growing up in New Zealand you have to be able to beat guys in the air because the wickets don't offer a lot of assistance in terms of sideways movement, so we're usually pretty good at being able to change our pace but I guess trying to make it as hard for the batters to read it as possible is the challenge.

In this tournament specifically is there a spell or a wicket you're especially fond of?
I've enjoyed bowling in Pakistan to be honest. I think the difference is that because I'm quite tall I get quite a lot of bounce and often I'm over top of the stumps or the ball sits in the wicket a little bit whereas the wickets over there seem to not bounce quite as much so I'm bringing the stumps into play a lot more. That's something that I'm going to have to be able to adapt to [for the final in Dubai] is the different length that you have to bowl over here that the ball sits in the wicket a little bit more, so you have to be slightly fuller and bring the stumps into play a bit more.

I think that's the great challenge of international cricket - you play in different parts of the world, and it can even be in the same tournament that you're playing in two quite different places to bowl, so you have to be quick to learn. I think the experience that we had playing here against India a week ago will certainly put us in good stead for that. We're the lucky team that's had to play them already, so you get an idea of what the conditions are like in Dubai.

A lot's been said about your economy rates and your ability to bowl dots. What do you attribute that to?
I think I've just tried to keep it really simple - just try to keep the stumps in play and not let the batters free their arms.

I guess a lot's made of right-handers wanting to target offspin, so it's been a cool challenge bowling to a lot of right handers and trying to keep them quiet. I feel like I've got a pretty decent method of trying to get a couple of dot balls in an over and maybe that means you go for a few more boundaries if you're a bit loose.

I don't have a lot of variation. I can't spin the ball the other way or things like that, so I think that keeps my gameplan pretty simple. I can't imagine how these mystery spinners stand at the top of their mark and decide what ball to bowl because they've got so many good balls to bowl. The simplicity probably helps me in a way. I can either try to bowl it fast or slow but it's all going the same way so there's not too many options at the top of my mark to figure out what I'm trying to do. Maybe that's super helpful.

You mentioned all four of you have a slightly different style, do you have quite well-defined roles in terms of what you're trying to do at which stage of an innings?
Yeah, I think one thing we're all trying to do is find a way to take wickets. We've seen that if teams in one-day cricket have wickets coming at the back end it's very hard to stop teams.

A lot of that for me, and I guess for Rachin and Glenn, is if we can build pressure then hopefully the wickets will come, whereas I think Mitch is probably a bit more adept at being able to take those wicket-taking balls. He bowls spectacular balls that get really good batters out, so his style of taking wickets is a little bit different to ours but as a unit if we can build pressure then hopefully we can lure some batters into some false shots and make it easier for the fast bowlers coming into the back end.

Is it strange for you that in this tournament especially there has been a lot of focus on your offspin, when offspin is the last thing you picked up in your cricket? Is it something you'd ever have expected a few years back?
Absolutely not. If you told me that I was going to be an offspinning allrounder even three years ago, I would have said you were crazy. But I really enjoy bowling, and I enjoy the challenge of learning and trying to get better and I think it's definitely helped. I've always thought of myself as a batsman, so I've never really put too much pressure on my bowling.

Whether I have a good day or a bad day with the ball I'll get annoyed if I don't score runs. Maybe it helps to take the pressure off my batting a little bit, but I still very much see myself as a batter who bowls and I think that mindset has helped my bowling. If I'm getting hit around, I don't find it to be the end of the world, though I take it very seriously and take pride in my performance.

I don't think it's something that will change as well. It's a funny situation - being a batter my whole life. It's just hard to shake that feeling of you hang your hat on whether you score runs or not.

I don't really know how to describe it. I completely understand that I'm playing as a bowler and my batting is a bonus, but it's still what I hold dear to my heart is my batting. I wouldn't have it any other way to be honest.

It's your first big final with the New Zealand team. Is it the biggest game of your life so far?
Yeah, it definitely is. It's a funny feeling. In the days leading up to the semi-final, I was a little bit nervous. But then when I got into the game it was just another game of cricket. I was just completely trying to immerse myself in the process of playing the game and doing what I do and what I love. I think that certainly helped. After the game I thought that experience was amazing and it's very cool to look back on. I was very proud that I didn't overthink the situation.

I think if you can get into that frame of mind where you're just really excited about trying to do the simple things well then that's going to put us in good stead and hopefully the years of mental skills and things like that that we've practised over and over again kick in tomorrow. It does just become another game with a little bit more on the line. It does sound really boring, but it's just doing that process over and over again. The final is just another distraction that tries to take you away from that process so if you cannot let the distractions get in the way and focus on the right things, then you should be able to put in a good performance.

Have you had conversations with your dad through the course of the tournament?
We always exchange a few messages and he's super proud of watching me play and I think the one thing that he enjoys is seeing the smile on my face when I'm out there playing. It's very cool to get those messages from him, and how much he's enjoying watching from home.

I think the time difference isn't great so they're sleeping in quite a bit and staying up quite late, but I don't think they'd have it any other way. It's super cool having them follow my career and it's great that they're so proud of me and I guess the thing that I enjoy is trying to play the game in the right way and hopefully they can see that through the TV.

Has there been any advice or does he leave you to your own devices now?
No no, he's always been really good at that. He won't offer too much but he'll know the right time to say something. He's been awesome.