The finalists of ICC World Cup 2019 did not disappoint in the first match of this year’s ICC World Cup and gave the spectators at the Narendra Modi Stadium exactly what they had expected. Continuing the excitement that ended in 2019 with England taking the trophy home, the two teams brought back all that zeal onto the field.
New Zealand won the toss and elected to field. Since the beginning of the match, New Zealand seemed in control of the game. They made regular inroads to keep England in check and restrict them to a moderate 282 at the loss of 9 wickets in 50 overs. While England’s Joe Root put up a good fight and managed to rake a total of 77 runs for his team, the rest of the batting line up left much to be desired.
NZ’s Glenn Phillips, with his part-time spin, produced an unexpected yet effective performance, taking 2 wickets for just 17 runs in his 3 overs, including the crucial wicket of Root. Without Root England would have crumbled under New Zealand’s attack. Meanwhile, Mitchell Santner contributed with 2 wickets for 37 runs in his 10 overs, and Matt Henry’s crucial performance yielded 3 wickets for 48 runs in his 10 overs. These bowling performances played the most important role in restricting England to below 300.
The inaugural runs of the 2023 World Cup were initiated by a powerful six by Jonny Bairstow, who put up a score of 33 off 35 balls (4 fours, 1 six).
The first breakthrough for New Zealand came when Henry had Dawid Malan caught behind in the eighth over by skipper Tom Latham. With this started England’s fall. A 70-run partnership between Root and Jos Buttler (43 from 42 balls, 2x4s, 2x6s) for the fifth wicket, which instilled some hope after the early struggles, was crushed after Henry had the England captain caught behind the wickets. England could not string together enough partnerships and kept losing wickets at regular intervals.
Besides Root’s innings of 77 runs, the partnership between Adil Rashid and Mark Wood for the 10th wicket was vital for England to score a defendable goal.
However, what happened next set many new records.
Let’s break the suspense and go straight for it. New Zeland’s Devon Conway and Rachin Ravindra stole the show with their partnership and their phenomenal individual centuries. Both the players were playing their ODI World Cup debut match and together they made the team’s target of 283 a child’s play.
They both came down on the England team all guns blazing. While Devon scored the first century of this year’s World Cup, Ravindra became the youngest and the fastest centurion for New Zealand in the ODI World Cup. The duo also recorded the highest-ever partnership of 273 runs by a New Zealand pair in World Cup history, as the English bowlers failed to make the game challenging for them. At the end of it all, New Zealand beat England with 13.4 overs to spare with just the loss of one wicket.
While the 2019 finale was a very very close call, we believe it is safe to say that Conway and Ravindra left no scope for this match to be in the same zone as that. New Zealand’s fiery play will definitely make the defending champions rethink their strategy.