Will Kane Williamson continue featuring in all formats for New Zealand?
Such questions resurfaced soon after New Zealand’s exit from the T20 World Cup after going down to Pakistan in the semifinals.
While addressing the media at the Sydney Cricket Ground on Wednesday, the New Zealand captain indicated that “after these sorts of events you sort of sit down and give yourself a chance to reflect at what’s coming up…”
Williamson’s strike rate was under the scanner throughout the tournament. But in its last group outing against Ireland, he played a captain’s knock with a 61 off 35 balls. However, in the semifinal against Pakistan, Williamson once again went back to his old approach with a 42-ball-46, at a strike rate of 109.52.
“I certainly love playing in all the formats. There’s a lot of cricket, and so that needs to be managed a little bit,” Williamson said.
Throughout the tournament, New Zealand enjoyed success while batting first. But against a star-studded Pakistan fast bowling department, things did not go according to plan. “We weren’t quite at our best, and Pakistan were outstanding, and that’s not an ideal recipe to win,” he said.
“That’s frustrating. But that’s cricket, as well. You always ebb and flow in an innings. You try to navigate where you need to be as a team and what sort of overs you can try and target to give yourself a good chance, and in a semifinal on a surface like that, we thought we were very much in the game at the halfway stage.”
Later this month, India will tour New Zealand for a limited-overs series, and the captain admitted that the T20 World Cup has been a learning experience for his side. “It keeps rolling on, and we’ve got games pretty quickly after this. These experiences are fantastic. Obviously, you want to keep being on the right side of results, but having said that, there’s a number of younger players, older players, and it evolves, these sorts of tournaments. So everybody takes a little bit into the team,” he said.
“When you get put in these positions again, you can reflect back and try and do it better. Yeah, there will be some reflection. It’s still raw. Obviously, we just walked off the park, and you’ve got to use these lessons to get better as a side and as an individual…”
Despite playing competitive cricket, New Zealand has failed to break the title jinx in a World Cup - across formats. “To be honest, being in a leadership role with the team, you’re always looking at the performance. I think we’ve played in a number of different finals and put out really good performances, probably good enough to win, and either got met by a side that’s played better or a side that’s played about equal, you know, however it looks,” he said.
“You accept some of those things, and so the frustrating part of this today is that we weren’t quite on top of our game. We fought hard and we showed some good characteristics that are important for our team and the attitude you want to see, but yeah, it wasn’t to be. That’s the frustrating part to me.”
But being the captain, he also wants to look at the bigger picture.
“You play a number of tournaments. You want to win some, but when you finish a tournament, you certainly just start focusing on the next one. To me, it comes down to cricket, and that’s where we put our focus,” Williamson said.
“The environment, how well we’re tracking, and there’s been a lot of good stuff. The journey was good, a lot of good cricket, but as we know, you’ve got to continue as you go into the business end, and today was certainly frustrating…”
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