World Cup: New Zealand's rise isn't a fluke, it's worth emulating

Rome wasn’t built in a day. Neither is a cricket team. Especially one that is making its maiden appearance in the final of a cricket world cup and trying to win it for the first time.

Every team tries to build towards the world cup, the pinnacle of the one day game. Usually there is a lead-in of 2-3 years where the right set of players are identified and are provided the experience to get battle hardened and mature as a cricketer to handle the demands of a tournament that brings along with it the probing eyes of the cricketing world and beyond.

Since the loss to Sri Lanka in the semifinal of 2011 World Cup, New Zealand have been on a course to the set the past right and bury the ghosts of 1992 World Cup. They have had their share of downs and the rare ups in the intervening four years, as they stand at the threshold of history with a date against “big brother” Australia at the famed Melbourne Cricket Ground only a matter of hours away.

On the field and off the field, New Zealand were teetering between hopeless and pathetic. They lost 10 out of 14 ODIs in 2012 and won only 7 of 17 in 2013. The controversial sacking of Ross Taylor as captain threatened to rip New Zealand cricket apart. The influence – or lack thereof – of John Buchanan as Director of Cricket and the muddling of things seemed to set them further back. And of course, losing the class of Jesse Ryder rounding in to his prime would have been a huge knockout blow to recover from, for any cricket team. Yet, New Zealand have soldiered on and are just a game away from holding the trophy that has eluded them all along.

It would have been easy to apply band-aid solutions wherever and whenever New Zealand faced trouble. It would have been easy to string together a shadow of a team and continue the story of “punching above their weights” in World Cup, before getting outplayed in yet another knockout game. Instead, New Zealand decided to take everything down and chose to rebuild from the ground up.

On the eve of the World Cup final, Blackcaps skipper Brendon McCullum attested to that approach. “It wasn’t so long ago that we weren’t in a great space in International Cricket. And I guess we went through some pretty tough times and that led us to strip things right back and led us to be totally honest to where we sat in the international game, and how we are viewed not just within New Zealand and also externally, and that is not just as cricketers, but as people as well.”

McCullum identified the terrific set of players and support staff they have assembled together in the run up to 2015 World Cup, in an efficient mixture of youth and experience, and of players who look eagerly to the opportunity – and responsibility – of carrying their team to the promised land. “I think what we’ve got at this point in time is a group of guys not just on the field but back room staff, reserves, even guys on the periphery of the squad as well who are all desperate to represent New Zealand and make a difference in this game”, said McCullum.

New Zealand have been remarkable in playing a refreshingly aggressive brand of cricket right through the world cup, and have been led from the front by their captain. It may seem like madness the risks McCullum takes with the bat and in the field with his bowlers and fielding plans.

He proclaimed that the last couple of years have allowed him and his team “to develop and understand the style of play we wanted to play which gives us our greatest chance of being the bigger teams on more regular occasions and also being able to win the World Cup.”

He indicated the presence of leadership qualities in their younger players as well as the experienced ones that has carried them through in crunch situations. “I look around the change room and I see a lot of leaders within the group and even some of the fresher guys into the side. They possess the behaviors and the skills, and the desperation in their character that you can rely on them during crunch situations as well. That’s been one of the real things we’ve been able to embed is make sure we’ve got a good group of people that are all playing for one another.”

The aggressive brand of cricket has allowed his team to rely a lot more on their cricketing instincts rather than formulaic solutions provided by analysts poring over endless streams of data and videos, which have plagued certain teams who have found their way out of the tournament already.

“We are all on the same bus heading in the same direction, and that allows us to be rather instinctive on the field and pretty brave as well, because you know you’re going to get [complete support> from the group. So we’ve got a great group of guys on the squad, and it’s been a pleasure to be able to share this experience with.”

Playing at MCG, a ground much larger in its size than any New Zealand have played in, in the World Cup so far, and with nearly 100,000 on hand – most of them barracking for Australia, and the grand occasion of a World Cup Final will not deter McCullum from playing the risk-laden aggressive cricket because as he said, “no challenge is insurmountable”. His recipe for success tomorrow is simple. Do what you have done all along and “remain authentic”. And play “with a lot of heart, and lot of belief”.

And when tomorrow - as predicted on these pages before the tournament – New Zealand and Brendon McCullum lift the trophy, it would be a culmination of the rebuilding process that has been in the works for the last 2 years and it would appear more beautiful than anything Rome may have had to offer.