New Zealand pacer Neil Wagner has on Saturday (June 26) revealed that his teammates were celebrating the ICC World Test Championship (WTC) victory the whole night and even the mace was shared around on the plane on their way home.
He also revealed that the recently-retired wicketkeeper-batsman BJ Watling will be taking care of the ICC Test Championship Mace for the next two weeks, as the WTC 2021 Final against India was his last appearance for the country in international cricket.
As reported by stuff.co.nz, Wagner said: “We shared the mace around on the plane and throughout the whole night while celebrating, everybody had their turn to carry it around and make full use of that. And then on the plane, Ross Taylor got me to hand over the mace to BJ Watling, he's going to take care of it for the next two weeks in isolation.”
He added, “I think it's a fitting way for him to send his career off, it's been an amazing career for us, the role he's played for a number of years now, just the whole person he is and heart and soul of the team. He epitomizes everything we are about as a team, the team-first attitude, being a guy that scraps and fights for everything; he's led that all the way from the start. He'll be sorely missed in this team.”
On New Zealand winning their first ICC trophy in 21 years, Wagner said: “It's still hard to put into words, to be fair. It still feels unreal. Everything is socially distanced, so you can't even really shake their hands, and we had the mace, everyone wanted to take a photo, you can't even do that, or we couldn't pass it on.
It's a bit of a shame but it's part of the world we live in at the moment. It was quite nice to see some Kiwis walk past and see what it means to them, albeit in the distance waving away, and saying congratulations, it means a lot to all the boys.”
He signed off by saying, “I don't think I've ever walked into customs and got greeted the way we did. Everyone was just straight away [saying] congratulations, pretty happy, grabbed our passports and all they wanted to ask was, Where's the mace, where's the mace? Seeing even police officers stopping wanting to have a photo from a distance with it... it was nice to see the smiles on everyone's faces.”
(With ANI Inputs)
