Dubai: A loss for both teams to Pakistan in their first match has turned the India-New Zealand Super-12 game on Sunday into a virtually knockout one, and both the senior pacemen in the Black Caps camp - Trent Boult and Tim Southee are aware of the enormity of the task at hand.
Boult, one of the modern greats of the art of swing bowling, had been a teammate of Indian opener Rohit Sharma in Mumbai Indians for past two years and has followed his first over dismissal against Pakistan with interest. ‘‘I have watched Shaheen Afridi’s dismissal of Rohit the other night,’’ he said during a zoom media interaction on Friday without elaborating further - referring to the inswinging yorker from the left arm Pakistan speedster which caught ‘Hitman’ plumb in front of the wicket.
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‘‘We have been playing each other a lot in ICC tournaments but there is no question of taking them lightly. Both sides are stacked with quality players - we have relationships with some of these boys but right now, the boys are excited and looking forward to the challenge of playing India,’’ he said.
While Boult has maintained that conditions in the UAE are vastly different from home, he feels it brings new challenges for the bowlers. Asked if defending a total may become a problem with the dew factor of the evening, Boult said: ‘‘Conditions can change here. For example in Sharjah the other day, there was not much a dew. It’s one of the joys of international cricket but we have the skills and hope to have a good grip on the ball.’’
Replying to a query on a lighter vein as to what makes the Kiwis almost a second favourite side for the Indian cricket fans - despite them turning the tables on India in key matches like the 2019 ICC World Cup semi-finals or the World Test Championship final last June, Boult agreed it could be due to the fact that they try to play with a smile on their faces.
In each of the three grounds you play at you have to adapt to all three, they offer different assistances for the seamers, which we saw in Sharjah, the slower balls at the back of a length worked
Tim Southee, the other leader of the New Zealand pace bowling unit, felt they will need to adjust quickly to the pace of the Dubai wicket if they want to put it past India in the key game.
“There’s a lot of learnings to be taken from the first game,” Southee, who claimed his 100th T20 wicket in the loss to Pakistan, said in a chat with New Zealand Cricket.
“We weren’t far off against a quality Pakistan side, but we’ve got to park that. We’ve got to look forward. It’s such a short tournament and there’s no easy games.”
“In each of the three grounds you play at you have to adapt to all three, they offer different assistances for the seamers, which we saw in Sharjah, the slower balls at the back of a length worked,” said Southee, who entered the national team’s bubble on the back of a good campaign in IPL for runners-up Kolkata Knight Riders.
“The Dubai wicket tended to have a bit more pace in it and seems to be a better wicket, so we have to adapt to that as quickly as we can,” he added.
