With the ODI World Cup taking place in India this year, a lot of you must have been wondering: would England’s boom-or-bust approach survive its first contact with the Indian subcontinent conditions?
Going by the pulsating ODI World Cup opener in Ahmedabad on Thursday, in which two Wellington teammates, Rachin Ravindra and Devon Conway, demolished England in 36.2 overs with the fourth-highest stand in the men’s ODI World Cup and the highest partnership for New Zealand at the World Cup, it is probably fair to say that it didn’t, for now.
England’s innings earlier petered away in an uncharacteristic fashion.
Maybe, it could have gotten more runs had it reined things in a little more, but then that is, sort of, the point of England playing this way. “That we got to 280 despite playing like that tells you something,” skipper Jos Buttler said after the match.
The reason Thursday worked so well for New Zealand was that it did not let go of the momentum. Conway and Ravindra batted with such gusto, knowing well enough the importance of set batters converting their starts.
This England team loves dictating terms and would have hated being dragged around like this—being made to do things seemingly at the whim of a New Zealand team which was forced to play with four part-timers!
By contrast, while the Englishmen will naturally tell themselves that it was just one game of a nine-match stretch, this feeling of being battered by a storm will disturb them.
It was significant that Ravindra, who only played because regular skipper Kane Williamson was rested, took centre-stage after he was asked to bat at No. 3, with the management realising that Ravindra’s role as a batter had to be accommodated.
“I wasn’t necessarily expecting it (promotion in batting order),” Ravindra admitted. “We bat seriously low with [Mitchell] Santner at No. 9, and he’s a genuine all-rounder. It gave us that licence to go out and express ourselves.”
New Zealand’s Rachin Ravindra celebrates after reaching his century with Devon Conway, in the ICC Men’s ODI World Cup. | Photo Credit: REUTERS
Just a few hours earlier, when asked to bowl the 17th over, Ravindra had delivered six rank-long hops and was smacked for three consecutive boundaries by Harry Brook. Ravindra did get his revenge off the last ball of the same over, but it wasn’t the brightest of starts with the ball for the left-arm spinner in his maiden World Cup.
However, Ravindra has always been a top-order batter first and then a spinner.
So, when he clubbed Mark Wood’s 148-kmph bouncer over square leg for six, the idea that he would subject all English bowlers to an evening of toil was starting to become a foregone conclusion.
His subsequent partnership with Conway broke records and England’s back.
“The way Dev and I go about it is to check in with each other, ball after ball, and make sure what’s important stays important,” Ravindra said. “The process and your routines, as opposed to just blindly trying to take someone down or do something rash.”
England’s turmoil could be neatly encapsulated in that moment when Sam Curran, at mid-wicket, jumped to intercept Conway’s pull, only to see the ball sail just over his stretched hands all the way for four.
Curran remained sat on one of the side pitches for nearly a minute with a look of exasperation on his face, even as the bowler returned to the mark. England had just gotten a taste of its own medicine.
What cannot happen, however, is for the story to be all about England’s deficiencies when New Zealand put on a masterclass. This win may not be epochal, but it will lurk. And for once, not by the barest of margins.
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