Daniel Vettori
The BLACKCAPS captain talks before the second World Twenty20 match against South Africa.
On what went wrong…
“No it was a very good wicket as we saw from the game before. There were plenty of runs in it, we just couldn’t put a score on the board and we were consistently under pressure from Pakistan and therefore we never got any momentum. I think you’ll hear most captains’ say with twenty20 cricket if you get five or six big overs going then you can take a game away from a team and we never had that today.”
On Brendon McCullum being injuring and his own fitness…
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“I haven’t caught up with him yet but knowing our luck at the moment it’ll probably be something serious. I got through the game fine and I’m confident about playing on Tuesday. We’re very hopeful Ross Taylor can play because we know how big a game it is and we know what an important player he is. The next couple of days are going to be big for us to try and get him fit and if we get him into the team then that boosts us a lot.”
On how injuries have affected them…
“It doesn’t make it easy. I think Jesse, Ross and myself being removed from our first 11 has made it difficult with the chopping and changing and fortunately we’ve done enough to string a few performances together to get us into this position. But you take two of your top four out of it, it does hurt you.”
On Umar Gul’s bowling…
“Well I’ve never ever seen anyone reverse the ball after 12 overs so he managed to do that and it made a real difference. He bowled really well and I don’t think in the history of Twenty20 cricket anyone’s reserved the ball after 12 overs. It made a massive difference today and with his pace and his accuracy as well as the ball reversing he was a difficult proposition.”
On the game v Sri Lanka coming up…
“Its going to be a tough game, especially with our run rate taking a hit today, Sri Lanka along with South Africa are probably favourites for the tournament the way they’re playing, so we need to step up. We’ve got to step up for a big game. Hopefully Sri Lanka are already through to the Super 8s and that may mean they rest some players or they take their foot off a little bit but in saying that, theyre probably not a team to do that ever. It’s our biggest game so far and if we want to go anywhere in this tournament we have to win it. If we don’’t we will have only beaten Scotland and Ireland and it will be a disappointing tournament.”
On being reckless with their batting...
“No I wouldn’t say that. Twenty20 cricket is all about taking risks and sometimes you meet an opposition that bowling exceptionally well and you don’t quite pull it off. if you don’t take risks you end up with 120 and we want to back our batsmen to go out there and be aggressive. We knew we needed 180 to compete and today wasn’t our day.”
