New Zealand eye two in two

After stunning performance in opener against defending champs England, NZ will want to be even more emphatic when they face the Netherlands today

Kane Williamson, who is recovering from a torn anterior cruciate ligament that he suffered earlier this year, will not be available for today’s match against the Netherlands. But the team are set to be boosted by the availability of pacers Tim Southee and Lockie Ferguson as they look to continue their strong start to the group stage at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium.

The key to the next few matches would be how quickly they adapt to the conditions. “It comes down to who can adjust to the conditions on the day, as most of us are all actually very foreign to these conditions, barring probably guys who have had a lot of success in the IPL over the years,’’ said all-rounder Glenn Phillips.

Santner key for NZ

Left-arm spinner Mitchell Santner’s skill set to bowl quick and slow from pretty much the exact same action has created problems for the batters. According to Phillips, the spinner has an intuition about batters coming at him.

Glenn Phillips

New Zealand, however, would not like to take The Netherlands lightly. Bas de Leede took centrestage against Pakistan with his four-for and a half century. Off spinner Aryan Dutt, too, had a good outing in the first match.

The Dutch had beaten quite a few good opponents to be able to qualify for the tournament in the first place, felt Phillips. “They have a lot of high professional cricketers that play all through county cricket as well. So, they’ve definitely got a good skill set. They know their roles. They bond together well as a team,” he said.

Meanwhile, former South African cricketer Roelof Van Der Merwe said it was disappointing to lose to Pakistan. 

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Pak were under pressure

“We had Pakistan under a bit of pressure there. Everybody knows that. Obviously, the learnings from that is we’ve got to do it for longer and that’s been discussed and if you compare it to T20 cricket, it’s 30 overs longer. So, it speaks for itself we need to do it for longer and yeah put them under pressure for longer,” he said.

The Dutch have plans to get rid of Devon Conway and Rachin Ravindra early, after they both made match-winning centuries against England. “They [NZ] are very organised, skilful team so we know what we’re up against a quality team, but if we play the way we play and execute how we want to, we can put them under pressure and win the game,” said Van Der Merwe.

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