Andy Moles
The BLACKCAPS coach talks about fitness, on what went wrong and saving the match.
On how they feel at the end of today…
“After yesterday we’re a lot better today but the wicket’s a really good one to bat on and their guys played really well. The reality is after such a poor day yesterday we were playing catch-up cricket and we’ve got ourselves into a difficult situation. “
On how the bowlers are feeling…
“They are tired. There are one or two weary bodies in there but they know what it’s all about. They’ve had plenty of supplements to help them through but they are tired.”
On how Vettori is using the bowlers…
“Obviously he’s trying to rotate them as much as possible and use them in the best context of how the game is opening up in front of him. There are no injuries out there, just one or two are a bit tired and weary so that’s a good thing after all the time spent in the field. As I’ve said before the Test shows how much they’ve worked on their fitness before coming to this game, but there’s no injuries amongst them at the moment.”
On where to go from here -- do they play for the win or draw?...
“History would suggest there aren’t many sides to win from this situation; one of the things I spoke to the guys about right from when we first started against the West Indies is to recognise there are times when you have to learn how to draw Test matches. Certainly this one is shaping up to be a battle to save the Test match. Whenever we get the opportunity to start batting, I’ve spoken before about their feelings and how proud they are of their performance. They know they were well below par in the first innings and there’s the opportunity to get out there and score some big scores, so they are looking forward to getting an opportunity at batting whenever that may come.”
On if they will concede the series…
“As I said earlier, history would suggest that its unlikely we’re going to win this game but should we get into a position where we get into the last day with six or seven wickets left when you have the opportunity to chase down a large score then we’ll do it. Its all about getting into that last day with lots of wickets in hand. Whenever we get the opportunity to bat tomorrow I don’t think we should set about trying to chase down 550- 600 whatever it may be - the first thing we need to do is set a platform and that’s by early partnerships and that’s something we’ve been well below par in doing over the last year or so. Somewhere along the line we need to start having opening partnerships and the top three setting the base for the rest of the innings. On a wicket like this they have a good bowling attack, the wicket has no demons for the seamers so we need to get out there and show good application.”
On what went wrong on day two…
“We had a plan to bowl a certain way to certain batsmen, but we didn’t bowl according to plan in the last hour. At 206 for 6 we were in a good position to move forward - it wasn’t the plan to bowl them the way we did, so it was disappointing and yesterday we batted poorly. We need to make sure we get out there the second time around and play as well as we can. We have to do the basics for longer. We certainly haven’t batted in pairs for long enough. It’s been a common theme that we’ve been inconsistent in Test match cricket for the last few years and my aim is to get us be consistent and in this series we have seen that already. We’ve seen some really good things and unfortunately we’ve shown the areas where we’ve been quite poor. It’s not something that’s going to change overnight. If it was that easy, we’d have changed it ages ago. It’s a mindset in helping with the skills department, were working on that and the players are well aware of where we want to be in a years time.”
