We can beat anyone on our day: John Wright
http://www.senore.com/Cricket/New-Zealand-c754 cricket coach John Wright is hopeful of a turn around in his team’s fortunes as they bid to board their flight to Dhaka where they would appear in the opening ceremony of the World Cup tournament before they start their
campaign in Group A, in http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Sri-Lanka-c758.
The Black Caps have endured a wretched run in the ODI format where they have lost consecutive series to Bangladesh, India and http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Pakistan-c755. Before that, they failed to make it to the finals of a three nations tournament that took place
in Sri Lanka. In all, they have lost 14 out of their last 16 ODI matches.
Despite the bleak scenario, the New Zealand coach and former opening batsman thinks that the easy format of the tournament would help his struggling team that only needs to get past the minnows to ensure a spot in the quarter-final
stage.
As per the format of this year’s tournament, four teams out of each group of seven qualify for the quarter-finals.
The Black Caps have http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Kenya-c752 as the minnows in their group and finishing the league phase ahead of them will put them through to the knock-out stage.
"You just have to get through the group phase," Wright told
Reuters. "We are playing teams that we have to beat, then we have got Sri Lanka, http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Australia-c746 and Pakistan and we have to try and get [results in] some of those games."
Wright feels that the knock-out stage is simply anyone’s and the Black Caps would have nothing to lose as they are set to start that stage as underdogs against any of the four teams from the other group.
Black Caps would be, in all likelihood, taking on one of India, http://www.senore.com/Cricket/West-Indies-c760 in the first knock-out match.
The nature of the ODI format gives them a real chance of toppling any one of the quartet if they fire on all cylinders.
"That gets you to the next stage, then she's a one-off situation and that's exciting. Some of those teams have enormous pressure on them and if we put it together on the day, we can beat anyone." Wright said.
The small cricket playing country has had mixed results in the tournament, they have been making it to the semi-finals regularly yet have failed to go beyond the last four stage even once.
This time around, the pressure would be off them and that might help in relaxing them and easing the nerves of the players in the pressure cooker atmosphere of a knock-out game in front of a packed crowd in the sub-continent.
They are set to fly out to http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Ireland-c751 on February 12th and India
on February 16th. The Black Caps would be playing their group games in Sri Lanka with their quarter-final, in all likelihood, to be played in Bangladesh or India.
Wright feels that the team has shown some signs of improvement in their 2-3 ODI series loss to Pakistan. The positive for them is that both their wins in the series were recorded by convincing margins, they won the opener at http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Wellington-c864
by 9 wickets before ending the series in style through a 57 runs win at the Eden Park in http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Auckland-c766.
In between though they played some poor cricket and allowed the mercurial men in green to record three consecutive wins on their way to a series win.
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