That elusive gold medal

Right then, where to start.....

Firstly, I know it’s been a while since my last post, again, so apologies for that. The timing of the games and travel has been hard work and with the extra training I’ve put in, it’s been hard to work in actually time off and then find some time to put in a good effort with this. I could have done some lazy posting, but that’s not what I’m trying to achieve. So, over the next couple of days I’ll get a couple more posts in covering off some of our performances.

Secondly I’m one very disappointed boy. We’re out of the biggest thing in cricket (the ICC World Twenty20) I’ve been a part of. It was an honour and a privilege to be a part of it but in the chance I got to play I got it wrong and then didn’t get a look in from there. I’ll talk about that in a bit.

I’m now currently on a train heading to Leicester to meet up with the ‘Foxes’ and sort a few things there for the rest of the time I will be with them this season. It’s a real (excuse me) shit feeling packing up, checking out of the hotel and not getting on the team bus to head off for the rest of the tournament. A real empty feeling that I know will linger for quite a while; sure I am heading back home, my ‘over here’ home, to my wife, to my bed, to my couch and that’s all great, but the chance to become a World Champion has eluded me, again. Again!? Yeah, again! I have three silver medals in a box in my brother’s attic back in New Zealand from three Indoor Cricket World Cups. I played in two of the three finals and we were only good enough for second all three times, losing to the Australian team each time. This was maybe my last real chance to finally be a World Champion, to call myself a World Champion, to make history, and do something amazing. It’s gone, all gone.

The preparation, the time and effort, the sweat, the sore body, the gym sessions before and during, the fitness tests, the physio sessions, the massages that hurt, the warm ups, the ice baths, the lonely times, the boring bus trips; all the things that went into this campaign that I hated doing at the time, but right now, once you’re knocked out without the rewards that you feel like you’ve worked to deserve, I would swap almost anything to be doing them right now.

I can honestly say that I came into this competition feeling great. My head space was amazing; which if you’ve followed this blog for a while will know takes some work for me. I actually came into this World Twenty20 feeling and thinking I could come out of it as one of the best performing bowlers in the world; not necessarily the leading wicket-taker, but certainly with a great economy rate, being able to do the role especially at the death. My lead in hadn’t been perfect with 10 days off because of a rib blow I got while batting for Leicestershire, but I had just enough time to get some good net time and a match for Leicestershire before joining the training camp. This 10-day layoff might have been a little bit of a blessing in disguise as I really felt great physically heading into the tournament, no niggles, no tired body; I was fresh and felt like a little kid at Christmas in the game I played for the Foxes.

Our match yesterday, in essence, was a quarter-final for both us and Sri Lanka; whoever wins goes through to the semi-final. We had our team meeting and scouting session in the morning before heading to Trent Bridge. We went through the Sri Lankan batting line-up and bowling attack one by one using video footage and supporting notes prepared by our video analyst, Zach. Dan [Vettori] leads this meeting with input from us all if we agree or disagree with a plan to a certain batter or bowler; once we agree we move on to the next adjusting the notes if need be. I take with me onto the park, when I’m playing, shortened versions of these notes. My memory isn’t the best and so the easiest way to make sure I have the plan right is to take notes to refer to before bowling. As the new batter walks out I dive into my pocket, look at my notes and make sure I know what the plan is for either my bowling or the others, as this reminds me of what they will be trying to do and I can then get myself into the best place for me to field. I had been making these notes but they had been staying in my bag for most of this tournament, as I hadn’t been playing.

The boys held Sri Lanka to 158; a target we could certainly reach, if we got the chase right. It’s probably fair to say the track fancied them rather than us with their mixture of slower bowlers. As we predicted in our team meeting, Sanath Jayasuriya opened the bowling with the second over; he was going to be one of the bowlers that we were going to target and we couldn’t have got off to a better start. Singles off the first two balls and then Redders [Redmond] cashes in; four, four, four and a six to take the over for 20. Twenty six off two overs, great start in anyone’s book! Things didn’t quite go to plan from there, Baz [McCullum] out in the next over, Redders out two overs later, Ross Taylor then out first ball of the ninth, Scotty [Styris] then out fourth ball of the over to leave us 82 from 11 overs with six wickets in hand. From here it was going to be tough, something freaky was going to have to happen; some amazing batting, some poor fielding or maybe a really random bowling change that we’ve seen in a couple of matches here and in the IPL. Alas, none of that was to happen, nothing freaky, nothing random or unexplainable and we were bowled out last ball of the 17th over. All over, game over, we never took our chances didn’t do things as good as we can.

I’m now home, on my couch, to finish off this update. My wife will be home soon, I’ll make tea, relax with her and then we’ll head off to a yoga class later. Life goes on... But how different could it have been!