Tuesday at Eden Park will be the fourth time the BLACKCAPS have met South Africa this summer, but this is easily the most that’s been on the line. For both sides, their first ever appearance in a Cricket World Cup final is just one game away. No-one’s more aware than BLACKCAPS Head Coach Mike Hesson.
“It’s a one-off game and we’re all desperate to get to the party. I’m sure we’ll both turn up and there’s two sides that are playing good cricket. We’re in a World Cup semi final and we deserve to be there with the way we’ve played. It’s an opportunity for us to put on another good show and that’s what we’ll be focused on.
“I think the best four teams are in the semi finals, I don’t think many people could disagree with that. South Africa on their day are exceptional, but you put them under pressure and we’ll see what happens,” said Hesson.
After their quarter final win against the West Indies, the BLACKCAPS have moved to fourth place in the ICC ODI rankings, with the three teams above them all in the semi finals alongside. South Africa were many people’s pre-tournament favourites with their match winning batsmen and formidable pace attack, but their performances in the tournament so far and history in knock out matches make them hard to predict. The BLACKCAPS coaching team completed their scouting for Tuesday long ago.
“We played them in a warm up game, so we were prepared for that before the World Cup, then there was a little bit of tinkering, but we haven’t got a whole lot of scouting to do, when you get down to the business end you don’t want to spend too much time sitting around at the computer.
“They’re a good side, very similar to us, they’ve got a lot of match winners, you have to expect the other guys will turn up and put in a match winning performance,” said Hesson.
With only two days between matches, the BLACKCAPS had a tightly managed turnaround.
“Well, we'll travel tomorrow and get up there and prepare for it like we have any other game in this tournament. We'll get a training in and then we're into it. We’ve had tight turnarounds, we’ve had pretty long ones as well, we have a routine of how we deal with that,” said Hesson.
Consistency of build ups, calmness and a determination to focus on the task at hand has been the hall mark of this World Cup campaign, and nothing will change for the biggest match so far.
“We’ve been confident as a group, but we’ve never got too far ahead of ourselves, and we won’t start now. It's going to be all go, but a lot of the guys are very excited at the opportunity. So, no, can't wait,” said Hesson.
