There’s a T20 World Cup underway now and the Blackcaps have a reputation to uphold. They’re the current and inaugural World Test Champions. They have made consecutive ODI World Cup finals and four straight semi-finals. They were semi-finalist at the 2016 edition of the T20 Worlds. Less said the better about the last Champions Trophy but that competition doesn’t currently exist any longer so no dramas there.

Most of those tournament performances came despite not exactly being favoured on the way in but this team has a knack for tournament play, an ability to maintain a steady performance level under pressure and to quickly assess conditions and judge where those levels need to be. Yet Twenty20s are a funky beast. The shorter the format, the more elements of luck or randomness come into the equation and that could quite obviously go either way for the Blackcaps. They may be masters of controlling what they can control but how much exactly is there that they can control? Where should our expectations be for this team? How good are the Blackcaps at T20 cricket?

The easiest way to answer this question is to look at their results over the last few years. Ordinarily the last two years would suffice but we’ll make it three because of the pandemic. During that time the Blackcaps have played 39 T20I and have won 19 of them with 16 losses, 3 ties (all of which ended in super over defeats), and one no-result. Accepting that super overs are their own thing, here are the other major nations’ records over that same span of time ordered by their ration of wins to losses...

Smack-bang in the mid-table. Considering we’re in for a tournament in the United Arab Emirates though, with Asian pitch conditions, it’s worth pointing out that there’s a big disparity there in terms of home and away stuff for the Cappies. 28 games in Aotearoa (15 wins, 1.67 W/L ratio) is four more homers than any other team over that time. The timing of the pandemic had a lot to do with why other teams, whose summers fall in the mid-year, haven’t played as many. But still.

Over the same span, the Blackcaps have gone 4-7 in away matches. Three defeats to Pakistan in the UAE in 2018, a 2-1 series win in Sri Lanka in 2019, then the 3-2 second XI defeat versus Bangladesh a few weeks back. With the cancellation of their series against Pakistan we actually don’t know a lot about what to expect here. This is a team that’s undercooked on the road. Devon Conway for example... according to a recent Cricinfo profile the last time he played in Asia was on a schoolboy tour of Sri Lanka more than a decade ago.

Hence we need to dig a little deeper into the nature of T20 cricket to try and figure out what we ought to see at this World Cup. Twenty20s are a power hitting spectacle, right? Not to offer up any boundary countback PTSD or anything but generally speaking the team that hits more boundaries in a T20 is gonna win (according to this book, teams that hit 2+ more boundaries than their opponents win 94% of games). Likewise, because of the limited overs factor, wickets are way more expendable in chasing those boundaries. Meaning they’re less valuable for bowlers too – you usually have to bowl a team out twice to win a Test match but you don’t technically have to take any wickets to win a T20 as long as you keep the run rate down.

Obviously the situation of the game matters. No batter in their right mind is gonna play safe with their wicket on the last ball of the first innings but if you’re coming in at 30/4 after 5 overs then yeah you’ve gotta be more careful. Early wickets matter way more than late ones because the value of wickets is in relation to the runs that they save. Get Virat Kohli out in the third over or whatever and you avoid the possibility of him batting for seventeen more of them. And of course fielding is a massive factor in everything.

All of which seems to combine nicely into the concept of the power play, those trend-setting first six overs when the fielding restrictions are in place. Easier to hit boundaries but wickets are more valuable. Six crucial overs to set things up for the rest of the innings. Curiously, looking at some IPL 2021 stats, the champion Chennai Super Kings (whose coach Stephen Fleming is currently hanging out with the Blackcaps dispersing wisdom) had the third-worst average power play score (45.50)... however they did lose the fewest wickets in that phase of the game and that feels super relevant.

IPL scores weren’t massive this year, especially not after the season picked back up following the long covid break and a lot of those UAE wickets had been relaid. Only one of the top eleven innings totals was scored after the tournament resumed last month. In the final, Chennai were 50/0 after six overs and went on to score 192/3. That was boosted by 53/1 over the final four overs - including a 19-run over off Lockie Ferguson’s bowling. Their triumphant runs displays a clear strategy: wickets fall more regularly in good spinning conditions so it’s important to keep them in hand for the big slogathon at the end. Ensure that your best sluggers are coming in at that time and then merrily feast.

As far as the Blackcaps go, their batting order is a slippery one. All signs point towards Martin Guptill and Tim Seifert being the openers and considering Seifert’s up and down form of late and Guptill’s obvious preference for quicker decks... that is a worry. Guptill’s T20I strike-rate in Aotearoa is 149.04 but away it drops to 118.21. His most recent innings were in the UAE for the Pakistani Super League where he scored 69 runs in 6 innings at a strike rate of 104.54. Meanwhile Tim Seifert is coming off scoring 177 runs (10 innings) at 112.3 strike-rate in the Caribbean Premier League. Neither’s in good form. Neither’s ideally suited to the conditions they’re about to receive (though Guptill did just score a very useful 41 (20) in the warm-up vs England).

However Kane Williamson trends in the complete other direction. The last two IPL seasons have been held in the United Arab Emirates and here’s what Williamson has been up to there...

2020: 11 INNS | 317 RUNS | 67 HS | 45.28 AVE | 133.75 SR

2021: 10 INNS | 266 RUNS | 66* HS | 44.33 AVE | 113.19 SR

Important note here is that strike-rates matter more than averages in T20s. But a strike-rate of 113.19 is the equivalent of a twenty over total of 136 and if we’re expecting the scores to be more in the 140-160 range and he’s got hitters around him then that’s not far off exactly what the doctor ordered from Kanos. The blast-off openers are a risk but Williamson is a perfect foil through the middle overs, our best player of spin, and Devon Conway is someone who can score quickly in the early/late phases thanks to his array of shots plus he can keep things ticking over against the spinners too (being a leftie helps there too). Then if the Blackcaps can get to the last 4-6 overs with only 2/3 wickets down, that’s when Glenn Phillips and Jimmy Neesham get to do the crunchy stuff.

It feels like the Blackcaps will be pretty reliant on Guptill & Seifert if they’re gonna go huge with any totals as the lower order probably won’t offer much other than a few hearty swings – which is fine because the average T20I innings for a number seven is about 8.6 deliveries long so they’ll be there for a good time not a long time. The possibility of starting 10/2 though... that probably shaves twenty-odd runs off the Blackcaps’ average potential. Yet that’s only a problem if their bowlers can’t defend those runs and the Cappies have some pretty mean bowlers right now.

T20I Team Batting Stats, Last Three Years (Prior to T20 World Cup)

Ish Sodhi and Mitchell Santner will be the focal points of the bowling attack. A wrist spinner and a finger spinner, a right armer and a leftie. One who turns the ball a mile and the other who relies on tweaks of pace and direction. They compliment each other smoothly and are first eleven T20I Blackcaps in any conditions let alone spinner-friendly ones. Sodhi’s elite strike rate of a wicket every 16.1 deliveries moulds perfectly with Santner’s elite RPO of 7.38 when they bowl in tandem. At the 2016 World T20 in India, Santner took 10 wickets in 18.1 overs (11.30 ave, 6.27 rpo) while Sodhi took 10 wickets in 19.4 overs (12.00 ave, 6.10 rpo). They’ll be crucial to the team’s success in the UAE for sure.

As will Tim Southee. His many crafty variations make him a weapon in the power plays and some resurgent T20 form over the last four years reinforces that. He’s one wicket shy of becoming just the third man all-time to take 100 T20I wickets and his record in Asia is surprisingly good (7.79 eco/17.0 sr). Trent Boult is the one guy along with Kane Williamson who always seems to get a go in the IPL – an average of 31.23 last season is only okay but remember runs matter most and his economy rate of 7.90 runs per over is pretty sharp. Then there’s Jimmy Neesham who concedes a lot of runs but has a knack for taking key wickets (career RPO of 9.45 which is crap, career SR of 17.3 which is great). And Glenn Phillips will bowl some cheeky offies too.

But the secret weapon is Lockie Ferguson. He may have got tonked in the IPL final but here’s what he did prior to that: 2/24, 2/27, 1/33, 2/10, 3/18, 2/30, 1/26.

That’s 13 wickets at a 17.23 average with an economy of 7.46 runs per over and a strike rate of a wicket every 13.8 deliveries. Of the 18 players who took more wickets than Fergo in IPL21, Jason Holder was the only guy who played fewer than three games more than Ferguson. Only three bowlers with as many or more deliveries bowled had a better strike-rate. This is in keeping with Ferguson’s sizzling efforts in internationals where he’s already taken 24 wickets in 13 matches (all but one of them at home). Lockie Ferguson does two main things: he bowls heat and he takes wickets.

Some very real worries remain with these bowlers, most of all being: who bowls the last over? Think of this team’s terrible record in super overs and it’s clear that death bowling is not really a strength. But there are ways to minimise those aspects. Early wickets is the main one. Bowling to a disciplined plan is another. Top shelf fielding as well – something that the Blackcaps are always pretty good with. Plus it seems worth mentioning that they’ve got an experienced squad which tends to bode well at big tournaments. Guptill has played 102 T20I. Southee is at 83. Williamson 67. Sodhi 57, Santner 52, Sefiert 35, Boult 34, Neesham 29, Phillips 25. Doubt there’ll be too many other teams with five 50-cappers in their first eleven.

T20I Team Bowling Stats, Last Three Years (Prior to T20 World Cup)

(The RPOs here are all about 0.11-0.21 runs lower than the team totals in the first graph, cheers Cricinfo, assuming that’s because these ones don’t include extras… just in case you noticed that and were wondering)

Trying to place the Blackcaps in context is tough because there isn’t a lot of context to international cricket. Every country offers unique conditions, with international teams playing half their games (or three quarters if you’re New Zealand) in those unique familiar conditions. So keep that in mind when we refer back to the stats from the last three years. The average runs per over in T20I involving those nine teams (the nine teams who’ve played the most games) is 8.09.

Hence we can figure out a little about team identities by comparing them to the average. England are (way) above average RPO with bat and ball. Makes sense, they’re all about the aggression. Bangladesh are (way) below average with both. Slowing things down, trying to squeeze the game. The Blackcaps are a little above in both, a team that does concede a lot of runs but which can usually make up for that with the runs they score. That’s involving an abundance of home games though... at a T20 World Cup we can surely expect the Blackcaps to try and tighten things up a bit more in that Bangladesh fashion, but incorporating the team’s bowling strike rate of 17.9 which is second only to South Africa over the last three years. They take a lot of wickets, in other words.

So how good are the Blackcaps at T20 cricket? Seems like the jury’s still out on that one. They just haven’t played enough games overseas to offer much evidence of what they can do in unfavourable conditions and they don’t have enough players playing regularly in franchise leagues to piece things together. You’d be a brave person to bet on a team other than India or Pakistan winning this tournament. If the scores are high then England come into contention. If their old fellas deliver then the West Indies come into contention. If the difference between when they care (T20 World Cups) and when they don’t (every other T20 game) covers enough ground then Australia come into contention. Bangladesh’s bowling line-up is superb but their batting is crap so who knows. Sri Lanka are missing their usual quota of unorthodox game breakers but South Africa could be a dark horse. Dunno.

The Blackcaps have some blatant weaknesses but there’s also the makings of a very good team in there if they get the tactics right and in the last few years it does feel like they’ve begun taking this form of the game more seriously. If they were playing outside of Asia then there’d definitely be plenty of room for optimism but as it is we’ll keep them fingers crossed that the openers can pay an early platform, that those pace bowlers can take wickets in the power play and keep it tidy at the death, and then hope for the win against either Pakistan or India that they’ll need in order to make the semis. Make the semis and they’re in with a chance. But it’s Twenty20, man, you never know.

If you dig the yarns on TNC, be a champ and support us on Patreon

Also helpful: whacking ads, signing up to our Substack, and the ol’ word of mouth referrals

Keep cool but care