MATCH ANALYSIS
Follow UsThe ICC World Cup 2023 is approaching fast, and New Zealand are back! No one is surprised, no one raises their brow. It's as inevitable as the Christmas sunshine in the southern hemisphere.
It was the first ODI of The Blackcaps' tour of England, aka the first pre-World Cup dress rehearsal for both the teams and the Kiwis pulverised the English by chasing down 292 with eight wickets and 26 balls in hand. Devon Conway and Daryl Mitchell notched up their respective hundreds in a chase where the English didn’t turn up.
Stokes gets some game time, and Ravindra impresses
In the first innings, England scored 291-6 with the help of fifties from Dawid Malan, Ben Stokes, Jos Buttler and Liam Livingstone. On a pitch that wasn’t a friendly neighbourhood flat track, the balls (especially from spinner Rachin Ravindra) were sticking around the short of a good length and good length area.
Malan started well with Harry Brooks, who had a chance to impress the selectors to make it into the final squad for the World Cup in India. The opening partnership put on 80 runs. After both the openers departed, in came Stokes, who pulled off a Shahid Afridi to participate in his nation’s quest for the most prestigious trophy in cricket.
He got the much-required game time and scored a fifty but perished when he tried to hit too many shots against the young left-arm orthodox Ravindra. The Blackcaps spinner was stellar as he picked up Malan, Root and Stokes and gave only 48 runs in his 10 overs. How he followed Stokes and got him out after the latter tried to make room and hit him over covers showed that the young spinner wasn’t fazed by an intense attack.
Later in the innings, Butler and Livingstone combined to take England past 290, which at that point felt like a par score as the Kiwi skipper acknowledged post-match. As it turned out, 'felt' was the keyword because Conway and Mitchell snubbed that par score with their spikes.
The Mitchell and Conway show
Like England, the Kiwis started nicely with a 61-run partnership between Conway and Will Young. Leggie Adil Rashid was introduced in the 11th over, and he cleaned up Young off his first delivery with a classic leg-break that makes you want to believe there’s no difference between top-class spin bowling and a live magic show.
You can see what’s coming at you (a slow, loopy leg break on a good length that drifts in). Still, you don’t exactly know what it will do (turn away or in). As you decide on a course of action (Young played for the ball that turns in, probably after looking at the inwards drift on the ball), you realise halfway that it is a bluff (the ball turned away, not in). By then, it’s too late to change. The magician has revealed the final surprise, and your stumps are broken, quite literally in this case!
Sadly, that was the only piece of magic that Rashid could manage today. Once Willey got Henry Nicholls caught behind, in came Daryl Mitchell. He chews leg-spinners like a Kanpur man chews pan masala and then spits them out to paint the streets red.
In the 20 balls Rashid bowled to Mitchell, he scored 46 runs with four big sixes and four fours. As the table above shows, Mitchell’s batting record against spin is a bit counterintuitive, as he is especially severe against spinners whose stock ball turn away (leg spinners and left-arm orthodox).
Rashid is also a predominantly leg-break bowler who bowls his googlies as a surprise delivery. Freddie Wilde, who replaced Nathan Leamon as England’s white-ball analyst, might have missed conveying this piece of info about Conway to the leg-spinner from Bradford.
Mitchell’s prowess against spin, which was on display today in Cardiff, was an excellent sign for New Zealand, as spin is bound to play a significant role in the ICC World Cup 2023 in India. Moreover, Mitchell comes in at number four in this batting order and is bound to face a lot of spin in the middle overs during the World Cup. With Williamson bound to make a comeback in this squad, the Kiwis would take a lot of confidence from this batting performance.
Along with Mitchell, Conway’s hundred was pretty encouraging for the Blackcaps, as the southpaw has been constantly amongst the runs since he made his international debut for them. Today, he initially played with almost a run-a-ball strike rate on a pitch where the ball wasn’t coming to the bat. Then, at the back end, he exploded with Mitchell also dealing in sixes and scored his 4th hundred in ODI cricket. His batting average stands at 52.75 in the format currently.
As far as England’s bowling is concerned, they erred on the fuller side a lot on a pitch that had assistance around the good-length area. Except for Chris Woakes and Willey, all their bowlers leaked runs at more than 6 RPO. With their World Cup defence starting in less than a month against the same opponents (check the World Cup schedule here), the lack of penetration in their bowling remains England’s biggest concern.
The next ODI in Southampton starts in less than two days, on the 10th of September, and this time, England’s bowlers would look to turn things away from New Zealand’s favour, just like that delivery from Rashid did.
