I’ve never been greeted like that; even police officers wanted to have a photo with the mace: Neil Wagner

“It is very special. We had come very close to a few tournaments. It is yet to sink in and may take a couple of weeks,” is how Tim Southee, one of the architects of New Zealand’s brilliant win over India in the World Test Championship final, described his feelings as his team ended a two-decade-long drought of winning an ICC trophy.

Quite naturally, the entire nation and the players are elated after being crowned the world champions. As a result of their win, the Kiwi team has been awarded USD 1.6 million and a beautiful, shining Test mace (a.k.a Michael Mason).

Neil Wagner, the Kiwi quick, has provided an insight into how the team’s journey back home had some freak moments where the customs officials at the airport and police officers were eager to get a chance to hold and get themselves clicked with the iconic mace.

After the victory, most members of the WTC final squad boarded the flight back home, keeping aside a few who stayed back in England for The Hundred tournament. Those flown back will now undergo a two-week quarantine before they regroup with their families.

Never walked into customs and got greeted the way we did: Neil Wagner

“It’s still hard to put into words, to be fair. It still feels unreal. Everything is socially distanced, so you can’t even really shake their hands, and we had the mace, everyone wanted to take a photo, you can’t even do that, or we couldn’t pass it on. It’s a bit of a shame but it’s part of the world we live in at the moment. It was quite nice to see some Kiwis walk past and see what it means to them, albeit in the distance waving away, and saying congratulations, it means a lot to all the boys,” Neil Wagner was quoted as saying by stuff.co.nz.

“I don’t think I’ve ever walked into customs and got greeted the way we did. Everyone was just straight away [saying] congratulations, pretty happy, grabbed our passports and all they wanted to ask was, Where’s the mace, where’s the mace? Seeing even police officers stopping wanting to have a photo from a distance with it… it was nice to see the smiles on everyone’s faces,” he added.

Wagner further revealed that all the players “shared the mace around on the plane and throughout the whole night while celebrating, everybody had their turn to carry it around and make full use of that. And then on the plane, Ross Taylor got me to hand over the mace to BJ Watling, he’s going to take care of it for the next two weeks in isolation.”