ICC World Cup 2019: Match 37, New Zealand vs Australia – Who Said What

When it comes to playing in the World Cup, Australia are too good. They proved it yet again in the game against New Zealand at the Home of Cricket, Lord’s. Mitchell Starc was the hero for them who ended up with the magical figures of 5/26 and was too good for the Kiwi batsmen. New Zealand never looked ahead in the chase with the Australian bowlers not giving them an inch right through. Eventually, they succumbed to the pressure and lost the game by 86 runs.

The change in the opening combination didn’t work for New Zealand as both their openers Martin Guptill and Henry Nicholls were sent back by Jason Behrendorff. The onus was on Kane Williamson and Ross Taylor once again. The duo tried their best to deny the opposition any wicket and added 55 runs for the third wicket. But Starc came back for his second spell and snaffled the Kiwi skipper to suck the life out of their innings.

New Zealand could never make a comeback in the chase then and kept losing wickets with the pressure of the required run-rate piling up. They were no match to the Men in Yellow and were bundled out on 157 runs in the 44th over of the innings. They are yet to secure their top-four spot and now must win the match against the hosts England.

Carey and Khawaja propel Australia

After opting to bat first, Australia got into a massive tangle. While their openers David Warner and Aaron Finch failed after a long time and even the middle-order crumbled to leave the team struggling at 92/5 in the 22nd over. Lockie Ferguson and James Neesham had picked two wickets each and one thought that the end is nigh for Australia.

But Usman Khawaja and Alex Carey fought bravely to add 107 runs for the sixth wicket stand and staged one of the best comebacks of the tournament. The latter particularly was not fussed much about the situation as he played some superb strokes. His 71-run knock was ended by Kane Williamson. But Khawaja continued to march on and looked good to get to a well-deserved century.

Pat Cummins supported him well playing the second fiddle and made sure that the Aussies didn’t collapse. Even as Australia looked set to cross the 250-run mark, Trent Boult had other ideas. He sent back Khawaja, Starc and Behrendorff to register a sensational hat-trick an also restricted Australia to 243 after 50 overs.

Man of the Match, Alex Carey said:

Not the start we wanted (on being reduced to 92 for 5), but it was important to occupy the crease. I had no rush, just wanted to asses the conditions and then play my game. The pitch was on the slower side, there was spin as well. I wanted to keep it simple and play to my strengths.

Today was a nice day, high credit to Khawaja – he played right through the heat and Mitchell Starc as well. I wanted to spend some time in the middle, I’m enjoying batting at the moment, coming in early is a good opportunity, although I would like to be out there in the last 10 overs.

The keeping is coming up well, it’s a nice opportunity. It was a tough catch (Ross Taylor), was difficult to see the high ball under the blue skies, Ross was obviously a pretty key wicket. We will now go to Manchester, South Africa just had a nice win, so we need to keep performing and keep winning.

Australia captain, Aaron Finch said:

Great partnership to get us to a competitive total by Khawaja and Carey. It was important that we get time in the middle. It was a difficult surface to play strokes on, and for Alex to get the ball off the middle was impressive.

It was also a good surface for Lyon to bowl, I thought, and he bowled really well. Important to bowl the part-timers too. It gives you a lot of wicket-taking options in the 20-40 over period. It helps the team so much to get wickets in the middle-overs, like Starc, who can just return and take wickets immediately.

JL (Justin Langer), Smudge (Steven Smith), Punter (Ponting), myself, and Haddin, we all were involved in the decision (about the plan to dismiss de Grandhomme) of making Steven Smith bowl. We’re all part of the think-tank.

New Zealand captain, Kane Williamson said:

It was a challenging surface if you could hit the wicket hard. The nature of the slope here always brings about movement and some uneven bounce. We were in a position of strength in the first half of the first innings at 92/5. Credit to the way they rebuilt and got themselves to a competitive total.

I guess we were going to hide it up, and I bowled a few more overs than I would have imagined. Two left-handers were playing, so the match-up was important – that of the ball going away, and hence I gave myself a longer spell. We weren’t able to break that partnership and Carey came and took the game away – a brilliant innings on that surface.

I think Australia adapted better than we did. Some big lads hit the wicket hard and reaped the rewards. We needed a major partnership of more than a hundred to chase down this total on the given surface, and the guys fought hard but it wasn’t to be today. It’s important that we move on quickly from this game.

We need to do better on the next surface. We need to have a look at the surface when we get there and make the right decisions accordingly. The wickets haven’t been what most people expected, and they’re getting tired towards the end of the tournament.