Kolkata Knight Riders fans and management must be licking their lips in anticipation, as all three of their New Zealand recruits – Finn Allen, Tim Seifert and Rachin Ravindra – starred in the demolition job of South Africa in the first T20 World Cup semi-final at the Eden Gardens on Wednesday.
Allen slammed a century in just 33 balls – the fastest in T20 World Cup history – while Seifert (58) and Ravindra (13 runs and 2/29) played ideal supporting roles to help the Blackcaps enter the final.
With the starting later this month, Allen said he would be ‘pretty happy to bat on the Eden Gardens wicket more often’, before turning his attention to how his parents and family back home in New Zealand will react to his whirlwind knock.
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“I’m sure my parents are up watching the whole game. You know, hopefully they’re proud. But I think, you know, as a nation, I think hopefully everyone gets behind us and rallies around us for Sunday. Obviously, difficult times for people to watch back home. But I’m sure you know that people were keeping tabs on the game. And, yeah, hopefully they can get up and have a Monday off at work and watch the final,” Allen said at the post-match press conference.
The 26-year-old also revealed the Kiwis’ batting blueprint while taking on the Proteas in the semi-final, adding that they had taken lessons from their defeat to them in the group stage clash at .
“Yeah, I think we tried to keep it as simple as we can with our batting, react to what’s coming down to us and use length to our advantage. And I think I definitely wouldn’t say it was a club game. They definitely made it challenging for us as well.”
“And I think they’re a quality opposition. We saw that in the first game they played against us. And we just had to use what we knew from playing last time to our advantage. And I think that’s what they do so well, they back up performances as they’ve done all tournament. And I guess for us, that showed us their plans a little bit, and we wanted to try and use that to our advantage,” he said.
