“In T20 cricket, it’s the finest of margins as we know. Both games, we could easily have been on the winning side of it, but weren’t,” Walter said on landing in Wellington on Sunday ahead of the third T20I. “Probably missed out on a couple of opportunities each time where you probably would have sealed the game off for us. It’s a bit of a disappointment, but also very happy with how we’ve played.
“We haven’t played much competitive cricket coming into the series as a team [New Zealand last played in July, an ODI series in the West Indies]. And actually, I felt we’ve played pretty well in probably 80% of each game. We just haven’t been able to put the finishing touches on it each time, which is disappointing. But still so much good stuff to come out of both games so far.”
New Zealand couldn’t defend 180 in the second match after they failed to defend 225 in the first. Walter said the “pitch had changed a little bit” between the games and the quality of bowling had also gone up.
“Conditions are always different even if the day is the same. The surface was a little bit different,” Walter said. “The starts to the game are different. Nothing ever flows the exact same way. Certainly a little bit trickier from a batting point of view and that reflected in the scores. Probably also the bowling units on both ends bowled a bit better than the night before, having learnt a few lessons from that.”
‘Fast bowlers rested to manage workloads’
The quicks available for all three remaining games are Adam Milne, Blair Tickner, Jacob Duffy and Nathan Smith.
“Blair Tickner will be joining, [and] Matt Fisher will be joining as we try to move our way through the process; it’s not a perfect science,” Walter said. “But we’re doing our very best to give everyone a chance to get ready but also put their best foot forward when they do run onto the park. Hopefully it’s going to work out for us.”
