One of the more surprising facts in nature is that elephants are scared of mice. Nobody seems to know the real reason for the fear, there’s little that a mouse can do to hurt an elephant, but that does not change the fact. Sometimes in nature rivalries seems to defy logic.
The same is true in the cricketing realm too. The mightiest of all cricketing nations, India, has become a repeated victim of the smallest of the full member cricketing nations: New Zealand. This is especially the case in ICC tournaments.
Since 1990, New Zealand and India have now played 11 times in ICC tournaments. Four times in ODI World Cups, three times each in the World Test Championship and the T20 World Cup (or World T20 as it was called) and once in the ICC Knock-out (now known as the Champions Trophy). Of those 11 matches, New Zealand have won all except one match (in the 2009 Cricket World Cup in South Africa).
If New Zealand had been a very good side throughout that time, and India a poor one, that would still be an unusually one-sided set of results. But New Zealand have generally been a below average side, while India have been consistently one of the best teams. The record does not go close to telling the story of the difference between playing abilities of the two teams.
The reason for this disparity instead possibly comes from the nature of the New Zealand team (and the New Zealand people).
The mightiest of all cricketing nations, India, has become a repeated victim of the smallest of the full member cricketing nations: New Zealand. AP
New Zealand is a group of islands that are some of the most remote in the world. The early settlers who came to New Zealand, first from the other Polynesian islands, then from Europe and the rest of the world all required a sense of adventure to travel somewhere so remote. That pioneer spirit has remained, and part of it is a belief that no obstacle is too large.
If a mountain was considered impossible to climb, you can guarantee that there were teams of New Zealand mountaineers who had attempted to conquer it. The most notable (but by no means the only) was Sir Edmund Hillary. He (along with Tenzing Norgay) was the first to climb Mount Everest. His life was one of determination and achievement, but it was also one with a healthy (possibly at time unhealthy) disrespect for authority.
When he was told that he could not do something his response was often “well just watch me.”
This is a national characteristic, and not one that was just limited to Hillary. There are techniques to measure cultural attributes. Geert Hofstede, a social psychologist from the Netherlands, devised a metric called Power Distance Index which measured the respect for institutional authority that a country had. Some countries have a very high respect for institutional authority, for example Mexico, the Philippines, China and most of the Gulf states. New Zealand is always one of the countries with the lowest power distance measured.
In cricket this manifests in multiple ways. It means that captains and coaches need to earn respect, and don’t automatically get it. If they don’t do a good job of communicating with his or her players, the players are quite prepared to ignore the captain, with often disastrous results for the team’s performance. Recent examples include the captaincy of Ross Taylor, where the bowlers stopped following his plans, and came up with their own, and with Haidee Tiffen who lost the dressing room of the White Ferns, and as a result saw performances drop rapidly.
But a more positive way that the lack of power distance manifests is fearlessness towards the achievements of other teams. New Zealand are not afraid to play India. They don’t see the Indian team as rockstars of the game, they see them as just another group of 11 players.
In matches where there is not as much pressure, this lack of reverence for the Indian players can backfire badly. New Zealand have been beaten by a large margin on occasions. But when the pressure comes on in ICC tournaments, it has resulted in New Zealand being able to play with a clearer mind.
The mental side of cricket is huge, but it isn’t everything. Players still need to have the right skills to be able to win a match. In New Zealand, those skills are often honed at the amateur level, where a club side might have an international player, as well as a couple of school kids, a builder, a plumber and a couple of university students and labourers. While the days of international cricketers playing a lot of club cricket have gone, most players still turn out for their clubs a few matches every season.
These opportunities help with developing the tactical side of the game. If a player in your team can’t field very well, you need to learn how to bowl the ball such that it never gets hit to that player.
These opportunities come due to the lack of depth in New Zealand cricket. New Zealand has only 116 male professional cricketers. There are a few players who are semi-professional – where they have a job that their club has organised for them while they are playing cricket, but as far as players who earn enough to live off from their cricket, there are only a few.
That is a familiar story for New Zealanders in other fields too. Ernest Rutherford was a New Zealand Physicist who made several advancements in the field of nuclear physics. When asked about how he managed to do so much without the resources of the American or European universities he said, “we didn’t have much money, so we had to learn to think.”
This has been a big part of New Zealand cricket’s development also. Three of the four coaches in the IPL semi-finals were New Zealanders.
There are a few strategies that are now widely used in cricket which were developed by New Zealand captains. The disrespect of authority also leads to a disrespect of some traditions. Just because everyone has always played the game a certain way does not mean that it must be played that way.
In last night’s match we saw all three of these happen. The players clearly knew the plans and had bought into them. It was noticeable that there were not many directions from Williamson in the field. The players already knew where they were supposed to go. The captaincy was not just about Williamson coming up with brilliant plans, it was about how well those plans had become the team plans.
The New Zealand players were not overawed by the Indian players. Mitchell Santner bowled to Rohit Sharma just how he would have bowled to a club batsman in Hamilton. When a batsman hit a boundary, the bowlers weren’t going straight to the wide hole or trying to give an agreed single. Instead, they stuck to their plans.
New Zealand were also innovative. Opening with Daryl Mitchell who had played over 100 T20 matches without opening once before this tournament was a bold move. But so far he has scored 27 and 49, and got them both at a good pace. Having a leg spinner bowling with the ball turning towards the short boundary was also bold. But Williamson backed Sodhi to deliver, and he did just that.
India is still a great cricketing nation, but the particular national attributes of New Zealand mean that the match up has tended to go in New Zealand’s favour, especially in crunch matches. The increasing professionalism in New Zealand cricket might change that in the future, but for now it is a match up that New Zealand eagerly look forward to.
Michael Wagener is a cricket tragic from New Zealand. He discovered early on that he would never be an expert at playing cricket, so set out to be an expert at watching it.