Daniel Vettori
The BLACKCAPS captain talks about his decision to bowl first, the positives for the BLACKCAPS, the pitch and his personal performance during the National Bank Test Series.
On if they are happy with a draw…
“I think India obviously outplayed us in most departments, apart from our first morning session when we had them 200 for 6. From then on in I think it’s been India’s game. I think there have been some pleasing aspects; the fight Ross Taylor and James Franklin showed to give us even a chance of saving the game was pleasing but India obviously dominated the game.”
On any hindsight on bowling first…
“I still look back and think 200 for six you’d take that any day so I don’t have regrets about the logic of our decision. I suppose you want a better result in the end but to have an Indian bat up 2006 for six on a good wicket justified the decision.”
On if this performance was indicative of New Zealand’s summer…
“I suppose we have been inconsistent but we’ve only lost one Test match, I think people have to remember that. We dominated the last Test match and played pretty well against the West Indies, so we know we’ve still got a long way to improve as a Test side and we know we’re inconsistent but there’s still some pleasing aspects: Jesse Ryders’ performance throughout the summer, Ross Taylor’s couple of hundreds, Brendon McCullum’s runs and Chris Martin was excellent with the ball. That doesn’t mean were satisfied with anything we know were still the number 8 team in the world, we need to get off that as soon as possible, we haven’t got Test match cricket for a while, and we just have to improve in all departments.”
On the public’s expectations…
“We have a lot higher expectations than anyone else and we put more pressure on ourselves and critique ourselves a lot harder than anyone else does. They don’t have to worry that were being complacent at all; we’re trying to improve far quicker than anyone wants us to.”
On the match up between India and New Zealand…
“I mean they are starting to improve themselves away from home and that was always the slight on India. I think Australia, South Africa, India in there as the best three teams in the world and its hard to distinguish between the three at the moment.”
On where the team is going from here...
“I haven’t seen our schedule, I’m not sure how much cricket we have in terms of Test match cricket. I know we aspire to be the best in the world and we have to do that, but I think we’d like to see some improvement. We’d like to get off the foot of the table in terms of the major Test playing nations and get somewhere in those middle rankings, I think if we could get up to 4th or 5th over the next 24 months that would be very pleasing.”
On his afterthoughts on the pitch…
“Obviously we wanted a wicket here that we could force a result on and that meant we wanted something with a little bit going on in it in the first couple of days. Aside from that if I just took a completely neutral view I think its one of the best Test wickets I’ve played on. It was a fantastic deck and everything you want from a Test match wicket and I think if we play on it in years to come it will continue to be a fantastic ground.”
On what he has learnt since becoming captain…
“There’s a number of things. I think we need to improve our consistency as a side. We do things well for a period of time but the longevity of what we do is the thing that’s causing us the most stress. We see pockets all the time that we can be a good team but we’re not delivering it often enough and we’ve seen it though series for a while now, so its something of a continued stress for the team that we have to improve on. We just have to keep finding ways to try and do that because there is talent within the team and we’re probably not justifying that talent with the level of our results.”
On his personal performance…
“I was pleased with the way I went with the bat but I didn’t take as many wickets as I’d have liked with the ball. As a spin bowler all you can try and do is create chances and if you do that you’re happy but there’s always expectations about results and our results as a bowling group, my results as a bowler haven’t been as good as I’d have liked.”
