Staunch Kiwi support made my skin tingle

What a start to the World Twenty20. The results so far have got the whole cricket world talking, the Dutch in particular; not that I can understand what they say, but they’re talking!

Since my last post we have now played three T20 matches; warm-up matches vs India and Australia and then our opening match vs Scotland on Saturday.

The match vs India was a great event. Just like at home the Indian supporters outnumbered the Kiwi support in the crowd and easily made the most noise, this made for a great atmosphere out in the middle at Lord’s. This was my first match at Lord’s, I had been the 12th man in the Test match there last summer which I was disappointed about, although if you have to be 12th man anywhere in the world, Lord’s is the place to be it; the food is outstanding and the training facilities are fantastic, so I ate loads of great food and trained as hard as I could.

This time I was playing, we batted first and scored 170 for 7. This is about the score we think will be very competitive in this competition and to get there with some great knocks throughout our batting line up was a great way to start our first full-on warm-up match.

I opened the bowling and got off to a handy start, just five off my first over. That helps the nerves quite a bit! My next over wasn’t so good, well, it wasn’t a bad over in the way that I bowled badly, I actually bowled the over pretty well, Rohit just smashed me to all parts. He hit me from some pretty good lengths and continued his form from the IPL. Dan [Vettori] then did what Dan does best; he came on, picked up two wickets in his first over and changed the course of the match. It was through this middle period that we pegged it back and managed to get our noses back in front and we stayed that way till the end. With a couple of overs left in the match a chant of “Kiwi, Kiwi...” erupted from a section of the crowd, this was a buzz. Such a long way from home and our supporters that have to put up with a lot of indifferent results made my skin tingle, made me even more proud to be a Kiwi. Brilliant!

A pretty happy bunch of lads knowing that this win, our third in a row against India, and this time against a 13-strong Indian team, was what we needed in terms of knowing where we were in our preparation.

We played the next evening at The Oval against Australia. We were really surprised at the crowd for this one too, a real good turnout just for a warm-up match. This time we let down the supporters that had turned out to watch. We scored 147 which, in the end was a spectacular score as we were 21 for 5 by the sixth over. Scotty and Peter did a great job to get us back in the game and give us a score that wasn’t quite enough but it was one we could try to defend. We couldn’t defend it and Australia knocked it off pretty comfortable in the last over.

Which brings us to the start of the competition ...

The tournament opened with a shock, a pumped-up Netherlands knocked over England at Lord’s. This was not the kind of result we wanted with our match coming up the next day vs another of the minnow nation teams, Scotland at The Oval. This kind of result would have given Scotland a huge amount of confidence heading into our match and when, because of weather, our match was shortened into a seven-over per innings game it made our match that much more of a lottery.

We didn’t bowl well either but we did learn a big lesson about a shortened match; we should have gone to death bowling earlier. Normally, in a T20, you’d go to death bowling in around the 15th over so that’s six overs of death bowling. We were only in the field for seven overs on Saturday and maybe should have even started in death mode and just look to restrict the scoring as opposed to trying to bowl normal lengths looking to restrict the run flow that way.

My first over went for 18, 16 off the bat and two leg-byes. Not good enough. I hit the lengths I wanted to but I should have changed, earlier in my over, and bowled differently. I hadn’t bowled the two previous days before this match as my back had locked up and doing anything that involved bending hurt. I got through warm-ups really well and knew that I was going to be fine to play. My back had freed up and I felt good bowling before the match. I was really disappointed to have gone for so many in the first over of the match and given Scotland some momentum and confidence. It’s this kind of momentum that can really change a game and I didn’t do my role well enough, that said, Scotland came out, swung hard, hit the ball pretty clean and rode their luck a little. Anyway you look at it though, it wasn’t good enough from most of us with the ball. Scotland scored an amazing 89 in their seven overs.

Half-time and our changing room was pretty nervous. We knew we could do it, knock the runs off, but there is the still the scary thought of being upset in our opening match and then being in the horrible position, like England are, of having to knock over one of the favourites, South Africa for us, to stay in the tournament.

Our batting was special; it was going to have to be if we were to win at any case. Nine fours and five sixes makes chasing any total easier and that was the base of our chase. We chased down 89 in just six overs and won with an over spare which is an even more staggering. At the finish of the match there wasn’t that normal victory feeling, sure we had won, sure we had done it well in the end, but we made it hard for ourselves and caused us to worry more than we should have had we got it right with the ball.

There was a tough review of the match later in the afternoon I came under some pretty heavy scrutiny, as I should have and have learnt again about this game.

I’ll catch you back here in a couple of days with a bit more background on what we’re up to at trainings and in preparation for our next match vs South Africa.