Here are some lessons the Proteas can learn from New Zealand’s World Cup campaign.

Allow your strengths to mould a unique brand of cricket

The Black Caps have shown the world that if you stick to your strengths and show confidence in your players, you build your own style or brand of cricket. Particularly their bowlers. They have mastered the art of consistency. All of their bowlers stick to a particular line and length as a team to initially clamp the opposition. This builds pressure on the opposition batsmen and gives their strike bowlers, or star bowlers, the chance to take a few risks to try and find an opening. With the bat, although Kane Williamson has anchored the majority of their innings, he is allowed to play his own game. When he does play well it takes the pressure off others to perform and also feeds into his teammates’ confidence. Ultimately, this builds a brand of cricket that is specific to them.

Don’t let the gameplan restrict you

What New Zealand did well throughout the tournament was adapting to the game situation. This is largely due to brilliant captaincy from Williamson. They never seem to allow the situation to get the better of them and kept believing regardless of the match situation. Particularly against India when they were bowling, they chose a cohesive gameplan that suited all their seamers. The bowlers never looked like they had to adapt their style or what they are comfortable with to fit into the gameplan. This is was the opposite with the Proteas, who seemed like they tried to force their bowlers and batters to apply a gameplan that never suited their players’ natural ability.

Preparation leading up to the World Cup 

There was pretty much no doubt about who would be in New Zealand’s World Cup squad. In fact, they were so confident in their 15-man squad that they were the first nation to announce their squad. This gave the squad extra time to prepare mentally for the tournament. There was no guessing or doubt in the team or surprise inclusions on the day of the squad announcement. Their entire focus when playing ODIs was to find the perfect squad and blend, the emphasis was not on being a No 1-ranked side heading into the tournament. They picked consistent teams and gave opportunities to younger players years before the tournament so that they could gain enough experience heading into the tournament.

Photo: Cricket World Cup/Twitter