New Zealand players struggled to contain their laughter when their national anthem was played at the R Premadasa Stadium ahead of their T20 World Cup Super Eight match against England on Friday. It was a high-pressure game for both sides but the BlackCaps ended up seeing the lighter side of things at that moment, with many in the coaching staff also spotted with smiles on their faces.
New Zealand lost the match to England by four wickets and are now hoping for a favourable result in Pakistan’s match on Saturday against Sri Lanka. They remain favourites to make it to the semifinals, with Pakistan needing a big win against Sri Lanka to go through.
England’s four-wicket win over New Zealand keeps Pakistan’s semifinal qualification hopes alive. The Salman Ali Agha-led side now need to win by at least 65 runs if they are defending a total, or chase down a score within 13 overs, to edge past New Zealand on net run-rate and qualify for the semifinals of the T20 World Cup.
On Thursday, New Zealand put up a taget of 160 for England to chase. England ended up being caught in a tough spot and needed Will Jacks, who returned figures of 2/23 with the ball, to bail them out towards the end of their chase. England needed 43 runs to win off the last three overs when Jacks was joined in the middle by Rehan Ahmed. He ended up unbeaten on 32 off 18 balls to take England to victory.
New Zealand captain Mitchell Santner conceded there were issues with the batting effort. “Yeah, I guess today we, I think in the game against Sri Lanka we lost wickets in clumps through the middle And we obviously had a good death the last kind of four overs. And then today, it was the opposite,” he said.
“We put ourselves in a good platform. And I guess credit to the England spinners at the end there, made it tough, made us take tougher options than probably what the English batters did for us at the end. So yeah, it’s a close one. You could obviously say we should have defended those last three overs or with the bat we could have potentially got a couple more as well. But there’s a lot of things that go into an innings with both bat and ball.”
