India and New Zealand prepare for a five-match tussle against each other in the lead-up to the T20 World Cup in India and Sri Lanka beginning in February. For both teams, it will be the last chance to put the pieces in the right place before a crucial tournament – and for the Kiwis, a chance to send a loud message as a team with a mixture of experience and youth tries to bounce back with a telling performance.
James Neesham has been a key piece in the New Zealand teams over the last decade with plenty of impactful performances to his name. Ahead of the series, he speaks about playing for Dubai Capitals in the ILT20, where he is part of a unit trying to take the team to back-to-back titles, and the challenge of playing against India – particularly when they have the superpower of conditions which suit their style of playing, with a subtle dig at tournament organisers thrown in.
Working with Hemang Badani, who has earned his first coaching role for Delhi Capitals in the IPL. What are his strengths as a coach, and what is his role in creating a team fighting to defend the ILT20 title?
I wasn’t here last year so didn’t experience that first win. Obviously a very experienced coach, a very calm figure in the dressing room. Has a lot of knowledge around the game. You seem hima round the sideline of the game talking to the long-on or long-off fielder, conveying ideas onto the field, which is always welcome. So he’s been a great player for us, and obviously we’ve had some ups and downs, with good wins and tough losses. As a coach you have to take that into stride and he’s been great from that perspective. Keeps everything well-organised, and hopefully we can pay him back by going back-to-back in the next week or so.
Next month you’re visiting India for a long T20I series, and India have turned into a pretty formidable outfit over the last couple of years. Are there any prominent tactical plans you have seen that you think not only NZ, but other teams could exploit?
If there is any tactical plan, I won’t be talking about it before the tournament, that’s for sure. They’ve obviously had some good results over the last few years, helps that there have been a few tournaments in very favourable conditions for subcontinent teams. This tournament will be no different in that respect. It’s tough to knock over strong teams in their conditions and we’ll be talking a lot about that through that series in the next couple of weeks.
Not necessarily focusing on that series, it’s still international cricket, you still want to perform well and win games, but it’s no secret that it’s a bit of a tune-up for the World Cup coming off the back of that. As much as we’re looking at India’s team and tactics it’s about finding our own combinations and getting comfortable as a team, because leading into the 2024 World Cup in the West Indies we didn’t have any cricket leading in. It was a challenge to figure out the tactics for our own game rather than what our opposition was doing. We’ve learnt our lessons, and we’re going to be going in off the back of a lot of cricket. Looking forward to getting there and getting together with a bunch of guys with a lot of experience playing together.
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Neesham opens up on T20 World Cup ‘group of death’
Looking forward to the T20 World Cup, you are in a tough group with South Africa and Afghanistan. With this relatively being a group of death with two of the four semifinalists from 2024, what is the mindset and the goal for the Blackcaps heading into the World Cup?
It’s a tough group, we don’t have any control over the drawing of the groups for world events. It would be nice to be in that position, but we have to play with the cards that we’re dealt. In the 24 World Cup, we were in a tough group as well, so a few tournaments running which is interesting.
End of the day, it’s one-off games if you look at it logically. You’re probably saying that you win two out of South Africa and Afghanistan and you’re through to the next stage. It’s simple from that perspective to try and prepare for each game as an individual event, hope you can get a bit of luck on your side in those games. I doubt any of our focus will be on that next group stage past the initial group. We’ll be focused on that initial game really, and then each game as it comes, and then at the end of that group stage move on to the next one and deal with that when we get there.
On a personal level, how has the experience been sharing the dressing room in a finishing group with Mohammed Nabi and Rovman Powell? How does being in that little group with two quality power-hitting finishers impact your own growth.
It’s important to have a lot of experience in that part of that order. Probably the most difficult role in T20 cricket is batting 6 and 7 and finish games off. You need a lot of failure to learn your game and how everything works, and experience obviously helps with that. It’s been good to bounce ideas off guys like Mohammed Nabi and Rov in the last few weeks and learn how they go about their game, and always nice to look down the other end and see someone who is calm and has a lot of experience in these situations as well. They’ve had a strong campaign and hopefully can get us across the line again tomorrow.
