Australia will need to adjust their batting strategy if they are again faced with a slow pitch in their World Cup Super Sixes cricket match against New Zealand at St George’s Park on Tuesday, says opening batsman Matthew Hayden.
The lefthander had his mind back on cricketing matters at Sunday’s press conference after earlier spending some time surfing at Jeffreys Bay. Asked if the surfing excursion was becoming an annual habit, Hayden replied: ”Yeah, why wouldn’t it be at one of the best righthand breaks in the world. The surf is generally so consistent. Last year was pretty average, but it’s normally so consistent that you’re always getting waves so it was a top day.” Hayden didn’t have a net session on Sunday but said they’d played a lot of cricket.
”It’s been our strategy for some years now just to start backing off a bit. We’ve trained hard and it’s been quite a long campaign and I’m ready just to bat in the middle now.”
Looking ahead to Tuesday’s clash at St George’s Park, which starts at 10am, Hayden acknowleged that New Zealand would be a tough challenge. ”They’ve played good tournament cricket,” h said. ”We saw that we had our hands full in that VB Series (in 2001-02 in Australia when SA and New Zealand contested the final). We were a bit hurt by that, but it’s all about intensity and purpose for us and it starts on Tuesday.
”New Zealand are a side who tend to take the pace off the ball which is a threat to us, and we’re playing in conditions which are slow and low as we saw against England so we are going to have to be on top of our game.”
The world champions were given a scare by England, slipping to 46 for four and later 135 for eight before Michael Bevan and an inspired Andy Bichel won the day with a thrilling two-wicket triumph.
Hayden said the team would need to heed the lessons from that encounter. ”We went out with a very positive strategy against England to chase down that total as quickly as we could, not from an arrogant point of view, but more from a body language point of view,” the opener said.
”On slow wickets where you’re chasing small totals you tend to get into a position where you can get bogged down and not play your natural game. But I guess we were a little bit impatient — it was a strategy that didn’t work and we’ll learn from it and play better this time.
”This is a tremendous cricket side and every condition we meet in South Africa we are already adapting our game.
”Some conditions don’t suit the kind of batting we like to play and it’s the same with the bowling side simply because the conditions are quite slow and when you’re got a great fast bowling attack, it tends to take the edge off them.
”It may help the slower NZ bowlers but if we can keep wickets in hand, I believe we’ve got an equally good counterattack,” Hayden said.
On Tuesday, the Aussies will be playing their second match in PE and if they top the Super Sixes log, which seems likely, they’ll be back here next Tuesday for the first semi-final. Hayden did not seem displeased by the idea.
”This can be in a lot of ways our home away from home so to speak,” he said. ”We were based in Potch, played a lot of cricket there, now we’ve got an opportunity to set up shop and play here.
”It would also mean we’ve won every game or close to it, so that’s the kind of winning momentum we need in these last games.” – Sapa