Hamish Bennett interview: I am sure Virat Kohli will be determined to pay back for 2014 tour of New Zealand

Remember Hamish Bennett? Long before Stuart Broad and James Anderson perfected the fourth-stump plan to the unerring Virat Kohli, this Kiwi seamer had concocted the perfect recipe to get rid of India’s batting mainstay. In early 2014 when India visited New Zealand, Kohli seemed to have the measure of the Kiwis. In the first ODI, he blasted 123 in 111 balls although New Zealand did manage to stop him before he could complete a successful run-chase. New Zealand won the second ODI too as they once again stifled a Kohli effort in the run-chase, but not before he had made a stroke-filled 65-ball 78. The Black Caps knew that to stop him they needed a solid plan. In the third ODI, famous for the tie that Ravindra Jadeja’s blitz earned, New Zealand brought in Hamish Bennett, a hit-the-deck pacer known to make the speed gun work overtime. [caption id=“attachment_7912961” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Hamish Bennett addresses the media after being included in the T20 squad. Twitter@BLACKCAPS[/caption] Bennett concedes a six and a four in his first over against Rohit Sharma and is taken out of the attack. But the moment Virat Kohli walks in after Shikhar Dhawan’s wicket, Bennett is brought back into the attack. He has a packed off-side field against India’s no. 3 batsman and relentlessly hits the fourth-stump channel, varying his length ever so slightly. His first over to Kohli is flawless: six dots, all deliveries on or around off-stump. His second over to Kohli is even better: the batsman is beaten on the outside edge first ball and goes on to leave three deliveries in the over, all zooming in on an imaginary fourth-stump. In his third over, Kohli gets off the mark first ball with a deft dab to third man, but is back on strike for the third ball in the over. Bennett continues to pepper his outside edge and Kohli has no gap on the off-side to play shots. He plays out two more dots, albeit less convincingly, and off the next delivery goes for an expansive drive only to nick behind to the keeper. Bennett bowled 14 dots and a single in 15 deliveries against Kohli before the batsman got an outside edge, unable to break free from the carefully placed plan Bennett and the Kiwis had thought up. “I remember there was a specific plan given against Kohli. We were also focused on executing it pretty well because he is a great batsman and if we erred, we knew he was good enough to cash in,” Hamish Bennett says in an exclusive chat with Firstpost soon after he earned a comeback to the national side for the upcoming series against India, this time in the shortest format of the game where he is yet to debut. “I was looking to cut down room and build pressure with a fourth-stump channel. That day was mine. Going into this series, I am sure Kohli will be determined to pay back [laughs],” he said. Kohli has made a habit of paying back lately. Ask Kesrick Williams, who dismissed Kohli in 2017 and celebrated wildly only to receive a resounding backlash in a recent series. Bennett had to be reminded that he wasn’t too kind either with his celebrations back in 2014. After dismissing Kohli, the pacer went on to utter some expletives into the sky with his arms spread wide open. But the Kiwi pacer is quick to point out that those weren’t directed at Kohli. “I don’t think I pulled out a notebook or will be pulling out a notebook [laughs]. I will of course be competing on the field but have the utmost respect for a player of his stature. We New Zealand cricketers don’t usually take it overboard. The celebration wasn’t really directed at Virat. It was more of my own battle to keep playing international cricket. I had a back operation two years before that and I had a broken back. Lying on the hospital bed and staring at the ceiling, I remember thinking my career was done. I never thought I would bowl a ball again,” Bennett recounts. “To get back to that stage and get the wicket of a premier batsman like him.. it doesn’t matter who it was…to just bowl at that level was a huge turnaround for me. That’s two years of hard rehab and the related frustration. Nothing was directed at Virat or the team. It was just my excitement to get back to that level.”

WICKET | Another huge wicket. This time it's Colin Munro that has to go. Edged behind off the bowling of Hamish Bennett and taken well by Tom Blundell👏

ACES 33/3 (4.3) | LIVE SCORING https://t.co/aAeoYCiFHY#WEAREWELLINGTON⚪️🟡⚫️#SuperSmashNZ pic.twitter.com/ap0ZY2iFsM

— Cricket Wellington (@cricketwgtninc) January 12, 2020

He made a few tweaks to his action and arm movement and the results bore fruit when he executed a drawn-up plan to perfection against a premier limited-overs batsman like Kohli. He, however, vanished after that series only to make a brief appearance in 2017 against Bangladesh in Ireland. That was the last of Bennett although his ODI numbers make for pretty viewing: 27 wickets in 16 matches at an average of 23. Now 32, his latest call-up to the side in the shortest format of the game comes on the back of compelling performances in the local scene. He ended the 2019/20 Super Smash, New Zealand’s T20 League, as the top wicket-taker with 17 wickets in 11 matches at an economy of 7.20 as his team, the Wellington Firebirds won the title. This performance comes after a rather ordinary outing in the 2018 edition of the same tournament where he leaked runs at an economy of 9.19. What has changed is the addition of a few variations in a bid to become a “smarter bowler”. “In 2018, I was the captain of Wellington side in the Super Smash and the One Day Cup. We won the One Day Cup and I probably had the extra workload of captaining the side and managing my bowling. I probably lost a bit of focus on my own game. I had done well in the two years before that, so it’s probably the additional responsibility and inability to focus on my own game.” In the Super Smash finals last week against Auckland, Bennett was up against the Kiwis opening pair of Martin Guptill and Colin Munro. After conceding 11 in his first over, the pacer returned to dismiss Munro in the fifth over of the innings. He bowled another over in the middle overs, leaking just five runs and then came back in the death to dismiss Martin Guptill and Ben Horne and finish with figures of 3 for 34.

“I have been working on my slower balls and cutters. I am not going to delve too much on that, but essentially I have been working on my death bowling. The slower variations are there mainly to ensure that I have a good back-up plan to the yorkers. Bowling them on the go may not be that easy so I have been working on them. See, in T20Is, you are going to go for runs. If you take wickets and don’t go for too many runs too often, you are doing well. And any variation that helps in this is handy on the go.” “I don’t think my basic bowling qualities have changed. I am still a hit the deck pacer, but I have probably gotten a bit smarter. It’s also perhaps got to do with maturing as I aged. The captaincy also played a role in fast-tracking me to a better mindset. I no longer just run in and look to bowl to a set plan or bowl fast. There’s a certain amount of thinking behind the eventual outcome, so I guess that has changed.” With Trent Boult and Lockie Ferguson ruled out of the upcoming five-match T20I series against India, Bennett will be expected to pair up with Tim Southee, Colin de Grandhomme and Blair Tickner or Scott Kuggeleijn. More importantly, he will be tasked with stifling the Indian run machine yet again, this time in a format where Kohli has the best batting average for any batsman with 15 or more games. If he does that, in a T20 World Cup year, Bennett could still be in contention once the mainstream pacers return. For now, he isn’t thinking as far ahead and is focused on the challenge at hand. “Obviously, ODIs and Tests are on my mind and I would love to get back. However, I will take it series by series. I will look to grab this opportunity in T20Is first. Whatever happens from there happens. To go to a T20 World Cup will be amazing, but let’s not get carried away. That’s a lot of months away. For now, my focus is on the series.”