Cricket side gets taste for victory
New Zealand skipper Brendon McCullum is hungrily eyeing the challenges ahead after a test series victory over the West Indies.
The Black Caps wrapped up a 2-0 series triumph at Seddon Park in Hamilton yesterday, winning the third and final test by eight wickets after chasing down a meagre 122 for victory on the fourth day.
The focus now switches to the five-match one-day international series that starts in Auckland on Boxing Day, with McCullum looking forward to the change in formats.
New Zealand will look to build on their test series dominance over the tourists with a one-day squad bolstered by the recall of Jesse Ryder and Martin Guptill, although they’ll have to play the first two matches without their test new-ball spearheads Tim Southee and Trent Boult. Southee is being rested to fix a toe injury while Boult was left out of NZ’s one-day arsenal.
McCullum is also aware the likes of Tom Latham, Daniel Flynn, Doug Bracewell, Hamish Bennett and Matt Henry are pushing for places in the national side with India due to tour here in February.
‘‘Any time there is pressure coming from below it’s a healthy state for the game in New Zealand,’’ McCullum said.
‘‘Those guys are performing nicely and banking some significant runs. I still believe the guys in this team are performing well.
‘‘The guys we have at the moment have done a good job over a period of time. The pressure is certainly coming on, but let’s just enjoy a good series win.’’
McCullum believes his side will quickly need to re-focus for the white-ball matches despite clearly having the upper hand over the Windies in the test series.
‘‘I’ve said it before when we’ve been on the other side of the coin, so I can’t change now, I think it’s separate games.
‘‘We’ll store this away as a test unit and be very happy with the performance and now we have to turn our attention as a different unit.’’
McCullum felt the test series win was an encouraging start to the home summer programme, with India to tour in February.
‘‘We’ve come out in this series, in our own conditions, granted, and performed well against as side ranked two places higher than us,’’ he said.
‘‘That’s a very good effort. India is ranked higher than that again and we expect them to come and deliver a performance worthy of their ranking.
‘‘We could have won 3-0, but we’ll take 2-0 and enjoy a quiet beer.’’
Opposing skipper Darren Sammy was left rueing an awful second innings in the final session in Hamilton on Saturday which saw hopes of a series-leveling victory disintegrate.
‘‘We’re disappointed, yes, we were thinking anything above 200 on the last day would make an interesting game once we built in the [Sunil] Narine factor but we ended up singing the same song,’’ he said.
‘‘We came here to good batting conditions, that’s not a 103-run pitch but credit to McCullum and his boys, they had a plan for every batsman and the way their bowlers bowled out under pressure we didn’t have a response.’’