Kane Williamson and the Black Caps find themselves in a difficult situation after their opening loss to Pakistan. Photo / Photosport
Kane Williamson and the Black Caps find themselves in a difficult situation after their opening loss to Pakistan. Photo / Photosport
Black Caps coach Gary Stead has acknowledged the difficult position his side are in after their opening defeat to Pakistan at the Twenty20 World Cup.
Wednesday's five-wicket defeat has left Pakistan holding a 2-0 record in the Black Caps' pool, after they earlier thrashed India by 10 wickets.It has also placed significant stakes on the Black Caps' next match against India on Monday morning, with the winner immediately earning strong favouritism to claim a spot in the semifinals.
If the Black Caps beat India, they would then simply have to win their remaining three games against Afghanistan, Scotland and Namibia to move through to the semifinals.
However, lose to India and not only would they still need to win those three games, they would require India to slip up against one of those three squads, while also possessing a superior net run rate to the Indians if both teams end up with a 3-2 record.
While there should be few issues dealing with Scotland and Namibia, Afghanistan loom as a team who could play spoiler as well. Having already destroyed Scotland by 130 runs, one upset over Pakistan, India or New Zealand would put them into the semifinal mix – but with their difficult array of spinners, they likely would match up better with the Black Caps than the more familiar India.
Kane Williamson and the Black Caps find themselves in a difficult situation after their opening loss to Pakistan. Photo / Photosport
Considering all those permutations, victory over India on Monday becomes essential for the Black Caps, and Stead wasn't shying away from that reality.
"Obviously the next game against India becomes very important. If you look through the seeded teams and the way it's going, you'd imagine that Pakistan are probably hot favourites now in our group to be the No 1 seed, and the rest of us are fighting for that next spot, which makes the next game against India pretty critical.
"We certainly know India's class and what they possess. So we'll have to take the game as deep as we can, we'll have to have a little bit of luck probably go our way. But we're looking forward to what's ahead of us, you sometimes have to lose one to then find out the most important things for you and if we can go and beat India we certainly put ourselves back on the right track."
Adam Milne will likely come into the starting XI for the India clash, while Stead has a few days to ponder whether his batting order was optimal.
Despite having trialled in the role in the warm-up games, Daryl Mitchell walking out as opener for the first time in any competitive cricket still sprung a surprise, but his 27 off 20 balls was one of the better returns and Stead would have no qualms sending him out first against India on Monday.
"We put Daryl up there after what we'd seen with his power and the way he was holding his shots in the warm-up games and I thought he batted really well.
"When you're playing on these slow wickets and looking for openers to get away to a start like that, I think he did that for us. We'll discuss it, we've got lots of different options in the team and we are on a different surface in Dubai so we just need to get a little bit more of an understanding of what our right team is to play before we finalise that."
