Cricket World Cup 2019: Underdogs New Zealand can use experience to beat England in final, says Shane Bond
The Kiwi fast bowling great has worked with both sets of players and believes New Zealand's experience of playing in 2015's final will serve them well against England
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Your support makes all the difference.If Sunday’s final was decided by financial strength then it would already have been abandoned as a mis-match. A population-off with England would have ended in the same result.
New Zealand, though, are a country that enjoy sticking two fingers up to those (albeit in a polite and understated fashion) who would have you believe that when it comes to top level sport, big is better.
It that was the case then a country of only 4.5m people and a cricket board with revenues of just US$38m in the financial year up to July 2018, would have been playing catch-up as soon as this World Cup began.
As India found to their cost, though, you should never write off the Black Caps.
New Zealand have now made it through to the final four of the World Cup in seven of the 12 tournaments played since 1975. They have also made it through the last two finals of the competition.
It’s an astonishing record but one that reflects the country’s ability to time its run in big competitions as adroitly as Kane Williamson times his cover drives.
Kiwi fast bowling great Shane Bond, was New Zealand’s bowling coach at the last World Cup and admits that he thought 2015 represented the country’s best chance of World Cup glory.
Now, on the eve of a Lords final against the hosts, he has reappraised his view.
“I thought last time was our best chance because we played all but one game at home and won all of them,” he says. “We’re a tough team to beat in our own conditions and the one game we didn’t play well was when we went across the ditch on the big occasion (the World Cup final against Australia at the MCG).
“I don’t think we’ve ever had the best team, I think Australia were the best team at the last World Cup and deserved to win.
“We had made the semi-finals on a whole heap of occasions, but you wouldn’t have said on paper that we were the best team in any of them.
“But we fight, we scrap. We’ve played well and you look at that team and you probably underestimate the experience that we’ve got. We’ve got a whole heap of guys who were part of that last World Cup campaign and know what success looks like.”
New Zealand are likely to name at least five of the players who lost out to Australia in a disappointingly one-sided clash in Melbourne in March 2015. Arguably the addition of Lockie Ferguson and Mitch Santner – both of whom excelled against India in the last four – alongside unsung all-rounders Jimmy Neesham and Colin de Grandhomme has given this Kiwi side an even better balance than the one they had four years ago.
Speaking after their semi-final demolition of Australia at Edgbaston, Eoin Morgan said it would have been laughable to suggest that England could have made a World Cup final in 2015. Any claim that the Kiwis would replicate their success in reaching another final four years on would have been met with the straightest of faces.
And that’s exactly why England won’t be taking Kane Williamson’s side lightly at Lords, in front of an expectant crowd eyeing a first ODI World Cup, after 44 years of trying.
Back home in New Zealand, they will be burning the midnight oil in the hope of seeing the Black Caps rise to the kind of challenge that their Rugby Union counterparts have tackled and side-stepped with such ease over the years.
“It doesn’t matter where in the world you are, if you’re not in your backyard then it’s tougher,” says Bond. “The best chance for us was probably at home but there are a whole heap of players who have gone through the experience of making a huge final – and that has held us in good stead.”
That said, the well-travelled Bond – who worked with England’s bowlers on the Ashes tour of 2017/18 – has spent plenty of time with a number of those players out to ensure that the host’s name is engraved on the trophy, rather than New Zealand’s.
“I’ve got a soft spot for those English boys having worked with a lot of them and with Jos (Buttler) and Joe (Root) at the Sydney Thunder (in the Big Bash) this year,” he says.
Soft spots, though, will be put aside for a hard edge in a final that will end with a country being crowned world champions in 50 over cricket for the first time.
It has been quite a wait for both.
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