New Zealand players leave the field after winning the second test match in the series between New Zealand and the West Indies. Photo / Getty Images.
New Zealand players leave the field after winning the second test match in the series between New Zealand and the West Indies. Photo / Getty Images.
Opinion:
As the slow build-up of expectation grows ahead of the Black Caps' World Test Championship final against India, it's worth reflecting on the size of the mammoth mountain NZ has scaled.
These five days represent the apogee of the history of our summer game. The Black Caps are atHillary Step. It's been a long and fraught journey from base camp all of those years ago, when they took on England, 53 years after crickets first recognised test match.
Every significant step has been documented since the team first rose to their test feet in 1930. It took 26 years for them to notch their first victory, notably the same number as the lowest score in tests, an unwanted rock in their pack. The decades have been punctuated with arduous success and ice falls of disappointment as they navigated their way toward a peak that has been draped in cloud for generations. The team that were for decades the sherpas of the global game now find themselves within touching distance of an achievement that will place them in rarified air.
The first ever world champion of test cricket. Not the One Day International champion, the Frankenstein's monster of the game, nor the T20 crown, ODIs bastard son.
New Zealand players sing the national anthem during day one of the second test match in the series between New Zealand and the West Indies. Photo / Getty Images.
New Zealand is primed and ready to become the inaugural champion. Neither fashionable nor backed, this under utilised team has steadfastly refused to be ring fenced as plucky strugglers, often revelling in its ointment based insect position. Over the last decades they have punched up globally. Their multiple and stubborn semifinals appearances in ODI World Cups since the inception of pyjama'd supremacy baring testament to that. The last two editions have found them well beaten in the final versus the West Islanders and then the title eluding them by the slimmest of margins. A margin no one was aware of until the final sod had fallen.
Now they are painfully aware of what it takes to win. They know how it feels to be second by a gossamer-thin margin. It's said that in order to win a final, you must've experienced the trauma of loss in one. This they have.
It maybe a different format, but the application and skills remain a constant. This team is built on substantial foundations, strengthened with deep experience and outstanding ability. Williamson, Taylor, Boult, Southee are the shoulders on which this team stand to reach out and grasp the improbable. They are further reinforced by the addition of men talented and dogged enough to be welcomed into this culture. The bloody-minded grind of the Watlings and Wagners, the yet to be fully realised talents of the Jamiesons and Conways.
Kyle Jamieson of the Black Caps celebrates the wicket of Shan Masood of Pakistan caught by Tim Southee during Day 3 of the 2nd cricket test match. Photo / Getty Images.
The title will be fought for in England's back yard, the founders of the game, competed for by the populous might of their former colony and the furthest flung outpost of its once mighty empire, who still retain the Union Jack in the flag they hold on the last push to the sports apex. A flag that should really be that of a Kiwi with laser eyes, such is the precision, accuracy and devastation required to write their name in history.
More than mere victory, I expect this team to personify and amplify what it means to be a New Zealand cricketer. After years of thankless struggle, I know this is what they will deliver.
As Ed once opined, they're going to knock the bastard off.
