New Zealand captain Kane Williamson said they are “chuffed” to have made the ICC World Test Championship (WTC) final while saying it was the result of the Kiwis’ “hard work through the summer”. He also lauded the two-year tournament for having a positive impact on the game.
Recently, New Zealand became the first team to qualify for the inaugural ICC WTC final after the postponement of Australia's tour of South Africa by winning two two-match Test series at home against West Indies and Pakistan.
They were benefitted by points dropped by Australia after losing the home Test series to India, and of course, thanks to the change in the rules due to COVID-19.
Williamson said of New Zealand’s World Test Championship final qualification: “It’s really exciting and (I’m) really chuffed for all the guys. It acknowledges a lot of hard work through the summer.”
He continued, “Obviously COVID changed the qualifying a little bit but it meant a number of teams were in the hunt. Coming into our summer it was going ‘right if we win these four Tests that give us an opportunity to be there’. We did manage to do that and play some good cricket along the way and it’s really exciting to get the nod. The Test guys will be really excited at that prospect.”
Meanwhile, Williamson believes that the World Test Championship had a direct and positive impact on Test cricket while pointing out the desire to qualify for the WTC final at Lord's helped New Zealand to win four back-to-back home Tests, and then the world got to see thrilling Border-Gavaskar series in Australia.
He further explained, “Because it’s such a long competition when it starts you are just focusing as a group on the session that you have in front of you, the period of cricket that is important. You can’t look down the line.
It’s just focusing on the cricket that you have at hand. Then you go through what we’ve all had and the COVID effect, and there has been a subtle change in some of the qualifying criteria. You can kind of then identify your best way to make a final.”
Kane continued, “For us, we had the four Tests in front of us. Within those, you saw perhaps some declarations that were quite fair because you understood the carrot at the end was far more valuable than just perhaps this one period of cricket.
You really wanted to push for the opportunity to win it. We saw that as well in the Australia-India series in that last Test, which I thought was great for the game, and saw a huge amount of exciting Test cricket as you were getting nearer to playing in the final.”
On the challenges that lie ahead of him in 2021, including “nine months or so” away from his home, the New Zealand captain said: “We haven't planned it out exactly, I don't think you can. You can sort of throw in a few contingencies to see how it all might unfold but you know, at this point in time we will look to go from the IPL to the UK, stay in the UK within that two-and-a-half, three-month period that we'll have there and then there's that 100-ball competition in that time which does fit quite nicely.”
He signed off by saying, “Then it's on to some of the series that we have coming up down the line a little bit which could be a three-ish month block against the likes of Bangladesh, Pakistan, and then India with the T20 WC and then back maybe December time.
It's a fairly long time away... I guess with this day and age with the Covid restrictions and quarantine, I suppose personally staying over there will mean an extra quarantine. It's an interesting time.”
(With Cricbuzz Inputs)
