A battle of equals at the Kotla
Form favours the Kiwis, familiarity points to the Englishmen
When this edition of the World T20 began, not many would have backed New Zealand and England to clash for a place in the final.
Better balanced teams like Australia and South Africa, consisting of
some of the most accomplished performers in the shortest format of the
game, have returned home. This only goes to prove that, sometimes, a
resilient bunch is better than a reputed one.
Creditably, New Zealand and England have covered the distance in
impressive ways. The Kiwis, the only unbeaten side so far, are ready for
an upbeat England which has won its last three games.
On form, New Zealand begins as the obvious favourite, having won four
matches – all batting first – at four different venues. England,
softened up by the West Indies in the opener, made its presence felt by
chasing down 229 against South Africa and never looked back.
New Zealand, powered mainly by the pyrotechnics of opener Martin
Guptill, has not scored big in most of its matches while playing on
pitches assisting spin. England’s batting has come good in three games,
while its bowlers underlined their presence in the last two matches at
the Kotla.
Therefore, in a limited sense, England is playing a ‘home’ game, knowing
the conditions much better than New Zealand. Ben Stokes, the
Christchurch-born all-rounder who bowled an excellent final over in
England’s 10-run victory over Sri Lanka, summed up England’s approach.
“We’re not going into this game thinking we’ve won it already, because
we know New Zealand are the form team and they’re hard to beat,
especially in this format at the moment. It’s going to be tough to get
out into the middle and try and perform our skills against the form
side. But, if we can perform anything like we have done over the last
two games, we should do well.”
New Zealand’s tactics of trying out 13 players and resting pacemen Trent
Boult and Tim Southee have worked well, with spinners Mitchell Santner
and Ish Sodhi turning out to be the surprise weapons. It will be
interesting to see how the Kiwi duo performs against a line-up that has
stroke-makers like Jason Roy, Alex Hales, Joe Root and Jos Buttler, not
to forget skipper Eoin Morgan.
On the other hand, the England bowlers seem to be getting better with
every match. However, the Kiwis bat deep, though several of their
explosive batsmen are yet to come good in this competition. Against
Pakistan, after Guptill set the pace, the lower-order batsmen did their
job reasonably well as the team crossed the 150-run mark for the first
time.
It will be a good contest between the New Zealand batsmen and the
England bowlers, should the former bat first for the fifth straight
time.
It will also be interesting if England bats first and sets a target,
taking New Zealand out of its comfort zone of putting runs on the board
and defending them. Though chasing is not such a bad option on the Kotla
pitch, it is
likely that, given a choice, New Zealand will take first strike.
Overall, a battle of equals with form pointing to New Zealand and familiarity England.
The teams (from):
New Zealand: Kane Williamson (capt.), Martin Guptill, Colin
Munro, Ross Taylor, Corey Anderson, Grant Elliott, Luke Ronchi (wk),
Mitchell Santner, Ish Sodhi, Mitchell McClenaghan, Nathan McCullum,
Trent Boult, Tim Southee, Henry Nicholls, and Adam Milne.
England: Eoin Morgan (capt.), Alex Hales, Jason Roy, Joe Root,
Eoin Morgan, Jos Buttler (wk), Moeen Ali, Adil Rashid, Chris Jordan,
David Willey, Liam Plunkett, James Vince, Reece Topley, Liam Dawson, and
Sam Billings.
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