Daniel Vettori
The BLACKCAPS captain talks before the second World Twenty20 match against South Africa.
On any personnel or tactical changes…
“Probably more tactical. I think just that ability to sustain yourself longer in the game. I think there were periods of time where we were pleased with our performance, particularly the second day. But we’ve got to make sure that that second day replicates itself throughout the whole test match. We’ve brought Daryl Tuffey into a squad of 12 so we will make our final decision on that tomorrow.”
On including another seamer or spinner…
“I haven’t looked at the wicket but I would say he would come in and put Iain O’Brien under some pressure for a spot. But we’ll make that decision tomorrow and just see how they all shape up and see how the wicket was. It was a bit wet yesterday, but that was due to a bit of rain getting on it so I presume most Colombo wickets here have been pretty flat.”
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On the new appointment to the selection panel…
“It’s something I’m looking forward to, I think it’s a role that I’ve probably been performing anyway so I don’t see it as an increased workload at all. It’s just now that I have an equal say in it and I don’t just have to deliver my thoughts I can actually argue them and they can have a lot more merit. So not too much more of a workload but something I am looking forward to.”
On the Sri Lankan seam attack…
“In some ways you put a lot of attention into the spin bowlers. We know the quality of them and I think in a lot of ways we played them particularly well, better than I have seen most New Zealand teams play spin so I was happy with that. But maybe that led us to believe that we had a bit more security against the seamers and when you come up against good ones you still have to play well and for them to have such a dominant role in the test match is something that we need to rectify as well as still keeping up our game plans against the spin bowlers. I think more than anything the Sri Lankan seamers know how to bowl in these conditions. It can be difficult but they work out a way to be successful. And so for us to negate their effect is going to be important in this test match.
On the team needing to score at a faster rate…
“No I don’t think so, I think that’s where we’ll get ourselves into trouble. I think we proved that we can bat long periods of time I just think that we’ve got to get away from the 30’s and 40’s and need to turn those into hundreds. I think that’s going to be the main difference between the two sides if we can. If you look at our scorecard from the last test in the first innings Tim McIntosh was the highest score of 68 and they had two centurions and a 91 and that really was the big difference between the two teams.”
On the team recovering from the stomach bug…
“It seems that way, everyone took full part in training yesterday but we will make a final call on that probably tomorrow after training and then tomorrow morning again with the team.”
On the top order needing to step up...
“Yeah, I mean, in a lot of ways it’s not my responsibility - it’s up to them to get themselves out of it. That’s what a good test match player does. He finds a way to score runs whatever mode it is and I think in a lot of ways I think we are selling ourselves a little bit short with some of our performances and guys aren’t just grinding it out to get that result and I look at Jayawardene in the first test match. He almost batted his way to a hundred and once he got there he was happy with his performance and he just made sure he got the job done. I think that’s the responsibility that our guys have to take on board. It doesn’t really matter what I say to them, it’s what they think themselves and they have to make sure they just go out there and get the job done no matter how they do it. It’s the end column that’s the most important bit.”
On approaching 300 wicket and 3000 runs in Test cricket…
“Definitely yes, it’ll be a really proud achievement. I really hope I can get it out of the way quickly, there’s nothing worse than lingering around a milestone, so as soon as I do knock it off it’s going to be my proudest individual achievement in test cricket.”
On Sri Lanka moving to the number two spot in the Test rankings…
“It just shows you that you can work your way up the rankings. I think a few years ago Sri Lanka were sort of mid table, maybe even a little bit lower but they’ve just put together consistent performances and they’ve got a really good team. They just seem to be able to know what to do at the right time and they have individual’s always step up and perform their role, so we know they are a team worthy of that ranking.”
