New Zealand media have likened Eoin Morgan’s England team to
Frankenstein’s monster, saying they turned the Black Caps’ own game plan
against them to win the World Twenty20 semi-final on Wednesday.
While acknowledging England were the better
team and deserved the
seven-wicket win in New Delhi, Kiwi pundits said the seeds of the result
were sown when the sides met in Wellington last year at the Cricket
World Cup.
In that match, eventual finalists New Zealand trounced England by
eight wickets, prompting Morgan’s men to review their style and emulate
the Black Caps’ aggressive tactics.
“There was an element of Frankenstein to New Zealand’s departure from
the Twenty20 World Cup,” Fairfax New Zealand’s Duncan Johnstone wrote.
“This was an England team that the Black Caps turned into a monster. And the monster came back to destroy them.”
The New Zealand Herald’s Andrew Alderson said England also mimicked
the Black Caps by taking the emotion out of their cricket, delivering “a
clinical dissection which wouldn’t have looked amiss in an operating
theatre”.
“If the Black Caps could be deemed ‘the masters’, their apprentices trumped them,” he wrote.
He added that “England have morphed into a side with swagger and
chutzpah”, since their Wellington humiliation, rating them a good chance
of winning the decider on Sunday against either India or the West
Indies.
Johnstone said the heavy loss was a “limp” end to a campaign that saw
the Black Caps cruise through the group stages undefeated, including
wins over Australia, India and Pakistan.
The New Zealanders have shown they can advance deep into
limited-overs tournaments but are yet to reach the next level and win a
50-over or T20 World Cup.
However, Kane Williamson proved himself an able captain for the
post-Brendon McCullum era and the promising young spin duo of Ish Sodhi
and Mitchell Santner excelled.
Former Black caps paceman Simon Doull said Williamson’s men exceeded
expectations, finally showing they could play in Indian conditions, and
should not be judged too harshly.
“We’ve had a good tournament and adapted to conditions really well, I don’t think this is a failure,” he told Radio Sport.
“Today’s game will be disappointing, but if you’d told me at the
start of the tournament that we’ll go there and make the semi-finals of
the T20 World Cup on the sub continent, I’d have said ‘no way’.”
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