Pressure more on England, says NZ head coach
The New Zealand head coach Gary Stead gives his team a 50/50 chance at the Sunday Final when the Black Caps take on resurgent hosts England at The Lord's Cricket Ground.
"We are giving ourselves a 50/50 chance of winning and we have to be just a little bit better than England are on Sunday," he said.
This will be the second successive World Cup Final for the New Zealand team after 2015 which they lost to eventual champions Australia.
New Zealand, tagged as the eternal underdogs by the media and the Bering community had on 2015 sagged under the big moment pressure but this time round, Stead says his team is better equipped. Sounds true when one would see the way they handled it against the intense semi-final against India.
"It's pressure on both teams, it is how you handle that and what's made of it. The exciting thing is neither team has won a World Cup ... you are going to have a different winner than last time ... but India and England were the two who were touted as winners then maybe there is more pressure on them, " he said.
Gary Stead was earlier a ground staff at Lord's where he will now guide his team to pick up the king's pie on Sunday but he cherishes his run back then when he cleaned dressing room windows or was on scoreboard box duty as part of his job.
It is as. If an occasion for New Zealand as it will be for England when the two sides will fight out the final battle at the Mecca of cricket this Sunday.
The game to be telecast free to air in both countries where rugby scores over all else, is being touted as the biggest boost to the game. New Zealand being several time zones away from the real action, will be tuning into the Sunday Final at 9.30 pm which means an entire night out. "Many people can stay up late and Monday will be a public holiday back home because most of New Zealand will be up watching the game," he said.
But for now he is focused on the last of the three key goals that had been set for the team to navigate this biggest tournament of cricket.
"There is a fight and steeliness in the way we have played. We don't have to play the perfect game but what we do have to do is to be able to adapt to the conditions in front of us sometimes working out a 240 is a good score," he said.
Stead invested a lot of confidence in the Kiwi middle order "especially with the likes of Kane (Williamson) and Ross (Taylor)", he said.
"We have seven guys who were part of that squad so we will certainly lean on their experiences."
But at the end of the day, if we strip everything back it is a game of cricket.... there will be a winner at the end of it. There will be loser at the end of it you will have one team that will be happy and one team that will be disappointed so we are trying to keep things as real as we can" Stead said.
For Stead, this World Cup was never about 300 plus scores something which he had said at the beginning of the tournament. And this came through in the semifinal against India too.
Gary is mighty pleased about the way the semi final panned out against India. "A lot of characteristics we talked about within our team came through," he said.
"When we started the game, we thought it was a game of 300 but we quickly worked out that maybe 250 we would be happy to get to ... the opening bowling spell of Matt Henry and Trent Boult was absolutely superb. The Indian bowlers bowled to us upfront as well but we took the edges and got some edges there which put us on the front foot but I guess it was a little bit of a game of attrition as well so never thought we would blast them outright the way through but 240 was good knowing the way our guys struggled with the bat," Stead said.
He was all praise for the partnership of Jadeja and Dhoni and said it "was outstanding and it was also a very good example of our guys withstood the pressure," he said.
New Zealand have been up and down in the tournament but Stead is happy that as a team they worked on three key goals. "We have achieved two of them now we have just one to go," he said.
In an all out defence of underperforming star Michael Guptill who has been having a horrible tournament so far with the bat, Gary said: "There are no promises in cricket but I am still confident that the man has big match experience under his belt, he has big hundreds in New Zealand and he has done it in England in the past as well. Hopefully he can show what's on offer on Sunday," he added.
Stead is well aware of the hostility of the English bowlers when the two teams meet in the Final. "I don't see anything friendly in the middle when bowlers are coming at you at 150 km per hour speed. Both teams will really play the game really hard in the middle," he said.
In the semi final against India the wicket really suited Mitchell Santner and then those guys who could come into the wicket and bowl quite fast ... there was enough variation. "The spinners who attack the stumps are a little bit more dangerous. Mitchell's spell of 2 for 6 or 7 was unbelievable and world class bowling. But it still shows when Jadeja came hard at them you need to be brave."
Talking of Santner withstanding all the pressure, Stead said: "He is a special bowler for us. He has really good control of line and length and his ability in T20 cricket helps him in the longer game as well," Stead said.
For Stead it has been particularly satisfying to have won a lot of tight games like the ones against Bangladesh, West Indies and India. "It's been a number that could have gone either way," he said.