2021 T20 World Cup: Building Towards The Building Towards Phase
Leading into the T20 World Cup, Aotearoa's Blackcaps will tap into Asian conditions with tours of Bangladesh and Pakistan concentrated around T20I cricket. Five games against both nations with some ODI cricket sprinkled around the T20I stuff will be crucial preparation for the World Cup which looks set to be held in the United Arab Emirates; plus the kiwis have India, Pakistan, Afghanistan locked in as their Group 2 opponents.
Group 2 will be bolstered by two qualifiers from the opening stanza of the World Cup and there is a chance that Aotearoa could be the only non-Asian team in their group. There is also a chance that Netherlands could qualify to play Aotearoa in the group stages and this will likely see the kiwi-Dutch duo of Logan van Beek and Max O'Dowd face off against Aotearoa.
While the prep fixtures were announced, England's The Hundred has been happening and along with the T20 Blast there are fresh T20I insights to serve up. This is merely a continuation of previous T20-centric yarns delivered prior to the Olympics and we know that Aotearoa dominated England in every facet of their Test series, then a plethora of kiwis dominated T20 Blast and now we are seeing some fine performances in The Hundred to compound selection queries.
Keep tabs on the England vs India Test series. This serves as a fascinating juncture where lovely Test cricket meets the money-hungry styles of The Hundred and cramming as much cricket into an English summer as possible. How does this impact England's Test performances - maybe they have swung too far in one direction at the expense of the format they hold so dear to their hearts?
As for our kiwis, the one bloke who much of my ponderings revolve around is Adam Milne. Milne is ranked 4th for The Hundred bowlers with 7w @ 12.42avg/6.14rpo, which came after Milne took 6w in three T20 Blast games. Both competitions appear to be listed as 'T20' cricket and Milne's combined work across both competitions looks like this: 13w @ 13.30avg/6.87rpo.
Impressive stuff there and Milne has been operating as a T20 gypsy since returning to fitness after years of pesky injuries. I've touched on the up and down work Milne offered in the Big Bash League and Indian Premier League over the past 12 months, bolstered by a strong but brief showing for the Blackcaps in a few T20I games last summer. All of which was a bit confusing, now it's been flipped into a solid case for Milne's inclusion in the Blackcaps T20 World Cup group.
Jimmy Neesham is ranked 7th for The Hundred bowlers with 6w @ 15.16avg/9.10rpo, to go with 40 runs @ 10avg/181.81sr in his 5inns with the bat. Don't buzz about batting averages here as Neesham's 181.81sr is the most important nugget given The Hundred is all about quick runs and Neesham's role as a Blackcaps all-rounder can be nicely defined; take wickets in limited overs and score quick runs as a middle-order batsman.
Neesham's bowling strike-rate is 10sr - better than Milne's 12.1sr. Take that, slide back into Neesham's Blackcaps bowling and he's got the knack to take wickets regardless of how 'well' it looks like Neesham is bowling.
Colin Munro is an intriguing character as he is clearly out of favour with Blackcaps selectors, but continues to perform around the world in T20 competitions. Munro was far better than Milne in the Big Bash League last summer, but Munro was shafted for opting to take up the BBL gig and Milne was rewarded. This year Munro was an elite Pakistan Super League batsman (while Martin Guptill was the opposite) and now Munro is ranked 13th for The Hundred batsmen with 107 runs @ 53.50avg/128.91sr.
Munro is the leading run-scorer for kiwis in The Hundred and the blokes chasing him make Munro's Blackcaps future even funkier. Devon Conway, Glenn Phillips and Finn Allen have between 92-97 runs each and Allen's the eye-catcher here with 158.62sr - extremely similar to his 159.60sr in T20 Blast.
I've gone into detail about the excellence of Conway, Phillips and Allen in the T20 Blast so I won't repeat all that here. The update is that Munro's still lurking and based on T20/The Hundred cricket, all four of these blokes could feature in a Blackcaps T20 squad. Munro is the only bloke who is not a certainty in my mind and while Munro seems like a perfect back up batsman via his experience, one can't trust the political selection nature of Blackcaps cricket.
Aotearoa batting depth:
Kane Williamson, Colin Munro, Martin Guptill, Devon Conway, Glenn Phillips, Finn Allen.
That's six blokes competing for four, maybe five batting slots. I reckon four because of Aotearoa's all-rounder depth where most fans would want Neesham and Colin de Grandhomme in the same team. Most fans will also have Mitchell Santner and Ish Sodhi locked in as the spin-twins, which would probably be the case in any conditions considering their work in Aotearoa but is bolstered by the World Cup being in UAE.
Milne and Lockie Ferguson are two speedsters in the mix. I've got Ferguson as a 1st 11 seamer, while Milne is working his way closer to that marker with every tournament he plays. Tim Southee may hold the crown as Aotearoa's best T20I seamer right now and Trent Boult is more of the ODI wizard, but Boult has been the only consistent high quality kiwi in the IPL alongside Williamson. Both Southee and Boult would look fine as a seam combo in a T20 World Cup in UAE.
Kyle Jamieson's pretty good too. Hamish Bennett's apparently a T20 superhero also.
Such depth has already seen me surrender to Ross Taylor not being required, although a slither of hope remains that Taylor's experience could be useful. Blackcaps selectors have an inconsistent record of selecting players based on their Super Smash or work in Aotearoa vs those who strictly play T20 cricket around the world. While we can get deep into the mangroves about differences between Munro and Milne; one bloke was dropped for his BBL excursion, the other was rewarded.
How this Blackcaps T20 World Cup squad is built will be interesting given all the moving parts. There are far more world-class T20 players from Aotearoa performing at high levels around the world than there are Test players for example. There is also a genuine chance for T20 World Cup glory to follow World Test Championship glory.
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