What happens when Trent Boult has his most expensive bowling performances of the T20 World Cup without a wicket, while Martin Guptill and Kane Williamson combine for 9 runs? Aotearoa wins! The semi-final win over England continued Aotearoa's domination of England cricket this year and given that a nation like England doesn't blend their Test and T20 units together, we should probably take a moment to saviour how Aotearoa's best cricketers are instrumental in Test, ODI and T20I success.

Tim Southee was the best of the multi-format trio in this game with 1w @ 6rpo, taking him to 8w @ 5.75rpo for the tournament. Southee's timing is divine as he's currently in the best T20I bowling year of his career (since 2008) and despite his old chum Boult not taking a wicket for the first game of this World Cup, Boult is still 4th in total wickets and his strike-rate of 12.9 puts among the most efficient bowlers at this tournament. These two along with Williamson led Aotearoa to World Test Championship glory and here they are about to lead Aotearoa into a T20 World Cup final.

The bowling unit tapped into typical Blackcaps mahi to stop England jacking up 200+ runs. Only 4 wickets were taken, although four kiwi bowlers conceded 8rpo or less against England's powerful batting line up. That gave some wiggle room for Boult to be slightly off, even for Glenn Phillips to pop up for his 11rpo over. This win wasn't dominant, nor was it slick and smooth. The Blackcaps had to enjoy the grind throughout the contest and restricting England to 166/4 was part of that.

Overall, every Blackcaps bowler apart from Phillips has a tournament economy rate below 8rpo. Ish Sodhi is then the only bowler conceding over 7rpo (7.33) and he's the second best wicket-taker so that's all good. Then Aotearoa has five bowlers conceding less than 7rpo for the tournament. Boult, Sodhi, Southee and Neesham are operating with bowling strike-rates of 20 or below. Chuck in how every bowler does something slightly different and the same grit we saw in the batting innings was there for the bowlers.

That's because the Blackcaps don't have batting grit, or bowling grit. They are the Blackcaps under skipper Kane Williamson and this team is built upon such ideals. While folks buzz about the fun T20 ideas, the Blackcaps knew the value of wickets in hand and the need to slow down to speed up; slow is smooth and smooth is fast.

Lose Guptill and Williamson in the first five overs? Re-building is required.

Daryl Mitchell and Devon Conway aren't sluggers. Conway lit Aotearoa up in the Super Smash, although he was also leading Plunket Shield runs for a few summers in a row. Conway averages 40+ in every format of cricket, he told England to chill out on Test debut at Lord's with a double-hundy and while Mitchell didn't hit a double-hundy on Test debut, he did hit 73 on Test debut vs England.

Mitchell doesn't average 40+ in every format, he has already scored a century and to go with the 73 in his five Tests thus far. Mitchell also averages 38 in First-Class and List-A cricket. Mitchell and Conway are craftsmen, they have shown that they can score runs in various formats over a long period of time and that was on display as they negotiated the middle overs. Sure, the whacking at the end was fun and important, yet the foundation to that attack is going from 13/2 in the third over to 95/3 in the 14th over.

We joked about Glenn Phillips' T20 Blast six-hitting in the Niche Cast - but Phillips didn't go large in this game. Mitchell hit the most sixes for Middlesex in England's T20 Blast with 12 and he was the only joker to hit 10+ sixes for his team, while striking @ 144.13sr. Conway hit 309 runs @ 61.80avg/125sr with four half-centuries for Somerset in the T20 Blast and yet England looked as though they'd never seen these blokes before.

Moving Mitchell to open was a fresh wrinkle for this World Cup and it's understandable that international audiences are surprised by Mitchell's tournament. Key trends have been crystal clear for more enthusiastic kiwi cricket fans though and Mitchell's been building to this moment in the same way that Southee wiggled into his best year of T20I bowling, Boult churned out IPL consistency, Conway dominated Aotearoa then the world, Sodhi set up shop as a top-tier T20I bowler or Neesham fine-tuned his strike-rate wizardry.

All of this looks new, yet in typical Blackcaps fashion these things have been going on despite no one caring to look hard enough. Neesham has a strike-rate of 174 with the bat in this tournament and after his first four years of T20I batting featured four years of strike-rates below 140, Neesham has had strike-rates of 165 (2019), 171 (2020) and 186 this year. Southee had similar leaps in his mahi from 2018 onwards, so maybe a secret T20 potion was dished out around that time. Regardless, the individuals in this team have all been improving in T20 cricket since the last World Cup and others forced their way into the team via their growth.

Aotearoa plays Australia in the final and that's extremely fun, while also a bit scary. Ease up on looking forward though and reflect on this year for the Blackcaps in relation to England. I explored many of these ideas after a fairly easy Test series win vs England over the winter, which has then expanded to more English cricket dramas and another win over England. If you keep referring back to 2019, you'll miss how the cricketing power has shifted in 2021.

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Peace and love.