After suffering the second consecutive big defeats in the home series against the second-ranked ODI team India, New Zealand head coach Gary Stead said that the batting unit needed to build up the partnerships to put the serious challenge against India.
While New Zealand suffered an eight-wicket defeat in the first ODI of the five-match home ODI series at Napier, they lost the second ODI at Bay Oval on Saturday by 90 runs. However, the coach has still strong faith in the present squad but also added that the batting side needed to build up long partnerships as they have only one 50+ partnership in the ongoing series.
Stead said after the end of the second ODI, “We haven’t built partnerships across the top 6-7, which was the strength of what we did so well against Sri Lanka and what we haven’t clicked or done here yet. As a batting unit, that is going to be our challenge going into the next three games, to build those partnership.
“Our guys know that you can’t rely on the lower order to win games, it’s got to be the top order to score the majority of the runs, we haven’t done that as yet in the two games.
“I still have faith in our squad, we are still in someway experimenting, trying to work our what is our best XI is, and it is an ongoing thing, it will slightly change with the conditions as well.”
In the second ODI, chasing down the 325-run target, New Zealand was bundled out for 234 runs in 40.2 overs. Stead has felt that the Kiwi players had some improved performances in the second ODI but those were not enough.
Stead spoke about their performances in the second ODI, “It (performance) has improved slightly but obviously not a polished performance from us.
“They batted well and I was thinking it could have been 350-plus. So, I am pleased with the back-end bowling performance there. In the end, the work Doug Bracewell put in was a promising sign, but it wasn’t a complete performance by any means.”
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In the ongoing series, New Zealand has already lost 14 wickets against the Indian spinners out of their 20 wickets fall. However, Stead is still confident in his boys.
He said about their spin failure in this series, “We didn’t have the partnerships, it is not that we can’t play spin bowling, it is just that we have taken some options which haven’t been the best option at times. Look, I have faith on our guys. We played spin very well against Sri Lanka, so it is not like we can’t, it is just that we haven’t done it as effectively here.”
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While the off-spinner Kedar Jadhav has picked up two wickets in this series, the wrist spinners Kuldeep Yadav (eight wickets) and Yuzvendra Chahal (four wickets) have picked up a total of 12 wickets in this series.
Stead added, “The two wrist spinners that they have here are very effective spinners. Our challenge is to find a way to be better. But look we wanted to be with the run-rate, in terms of the target we set ourselves with, it is the wicket that hurt us so we have to find a way to minimise that specially in the first 30 overs.”
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While the 2019 ICC Cricket World Cup in England & Wales is just four months away, Stead has claimed that their main focus is still to win the ongoing series despite trailing it by 0-2 with three ODIs to go.
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Stead said, “The World Cup is still secondary. We want to win this series first and foremost. We are just still working on what we think is our best 11 and how to balance the team with right number of all-rounders, batsman and bowlers, we are still working on that.
“But to be perfectly honest is secondary thing for me at the moment, it is still about working out in this series what we need to do to win three on a row now.”
