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A professional performance from the Kiwis

R Mohan

Very little of intense Trans-Tasman cricket rivalry was visible at Sophia Gardens in Cardiff yesterday when New Zealand demonstrated once again how they are a team who revel in playing on the big occasion.
On the other hand, the Australians seemed a jaded side who are being led by a lacklustre captain in Steve Waugh.

New Zealand may have won only one in four one-day international matches against Australia and may have lost 12 of their last 15 matches to their neighbours. But they are quite capable of downing their arch rivals in World Cups, in which they Kiwis had beaten their neighbours twice in three meetings this decade.

And when they went down in 1996, they did so with their guns blazing after a fine century from Chris Harris. Their victory in Wales was a professional performance in which they raised themselves each time that Australia threatened to take control of the game. They were seemingly short of ideas when Darren Lehmann and Ricky Ponting were adding 94 runs at a fair clip. They were in early trouble as their opners perished to the huge threat the new white ball poses in this World Cup and were 49 for four and headed for disaster.

An Englishman turned Kiwi in Roger Twose raised them to a level of play worthy of beating Australia, while the fully home grown Chris Cairns showed clear signs that when his mind is in the game he is capable of achieving greatness with the bat or ball.
He has his father's gift of ensuring that when he hits the ball it stays hit regardless of whether it is white or red.

This was virtually an old fashioned one-day cricket match in the more traditional World Cup of England style. There was none of the thundering noises of clashes Down Under where the sheer numbers of spectators can raise the decibel level with help from noise makers like the 30,000 cheap party hooters imported from Cina which blared all at once on the day the rivals had met in 1992 in an emotional opening match of the World Cup.

The matters of ' 92 and '99 could not have been more different. The Eden Park in Auckland was more like the birds section at a zoo, while Sophia Gardens was like a garden party in English spring. The match of '92 was histroic, in the sense that the New Zealand captain unveiled one of the most crafty shows of strategy ever seen in a single limited-over cricket match.

Radical and ultra defensive tactics were the stuff of Martin Crowe's leadership. Opening the bowling with an off spinner and ringing changes with the regualarity of traffic lights, Crowe stunned Australia. The tactical plan was not to give the batsmen pace and width to work the ball away. Soft and gentle medium pace was the secret.

The conditions in an English summer are so different that New Zealand could not but lean on the power of pace and movement to push Australia back. Geoff Allott was the wicket-taking hero but Gavin Larsen, with his deceptively slow medium pace, was still there with an economy rate to startle another World Cup.

If Crowe was that flamboyant type who liked to keep his finger on the pulse, Stephen Fleming is such a laid back type that he may appear almost comatose. And yet he led the Kiwis on with a sense of purpose that marks their limited-overs cricket in which the black caps are ambitious, if not quite as good as the all-blacks in rugby.

Lee Germon was an unusual choice for the captaincy for the World Cup of 96, his university degree appearing to be a greater qualification than his run and wicket-keeping abilities. And yet Germon inspired them to a vicitory in the opening match against England and then guided his team into the quarter-finals, where he led the way with his maiden half century in one-day internationals.

The Aussies had to stretch out to meet a target too close to the 300-run mark for comfort. The brilliance of Mark Waugh was of considerable help there as the Aussies avenged their Auckland defeat. But in Cardiff, they again met tartars in the Kiwis, whose victory now injects great interest into the four-way race for three spots in the Super Six from Group B.

"It's a simple equation - we have to win our next three games, or else we will be going home,'' Steve Waugh said.

The Kiwis enjoy just over a 20- per cent success rate against the Aussies in one-day cricket, but when it comes to the World Cup they have attained a consistency level their neighbours crave. New Zealand have never won the cup, but have been in the semi-finals in 1975, 79 and in 92 while getting to the quarter-finals in 1996. They will not go down without a fight in the elite group of six which they should get into now that they have felled one of three big opponents in their group. 

UNI