Jimmy Neesham was made aware of the boundary count rule only when he was padding up for the Super Over against England, right before New Zealand’s pursuit of 16 runs in the tied 2019 World Cup final.
Speaking on ESPNcricinfo‘s ‘One on One’ series, Neesham revealed that the call to open with him and Martin Guptill in New Zealand’s Super Over chase was taken mid-pitch after the initial 100 overs concluded.
“I was padding up in the changing room for the Super Over [when I was told about the boundary count rule]. It hadn’t been mentioned at any point before that. Having said that, I have actually won a game on boundary count in a Super Over in my career, so wasn’t much of a surprise for me once I heard it.
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“We had sort of a group discussion after the initial 50-over game was tied. Obviously, the England boys got to go back to the change room and have a bit of a drink and come back out again. We just had a discussion in the middle of the field really, a couple of senior guys and Kane [Williamson] just said that it’ll be me and Guppy [Guptill] and we’ll figure out who’s batting three when the time came. We knew reasonably far out that it’s going to be the case.”
The tied match which resulted in the first Super Over in World Cup history, required New Zealand to chase down 16 runs from six deliveries. Neesham, who managed 13 off the first five deliveries, conceded that the target appeared “almost unreachable”, despite the fact that the Kiwis managed to come astonishingly close.
[breakout id=”0″][/breakout] “When we went out to bat, it was meeting 16 off the Super Over, almost an unreachable kind of number, so the pressure was pretty well obvious at that point and you never blame someone for not getting 16. So it was about making contact as clean as possible and as much as possible. One short, 20 centimetres short, it’s 20 centimetres I’ll think about for a fair bit – for the next 50 years.
“I was reading yesterday that the White Ferns came runners up in the two World Cups before they eventually won in 2000. Maybe that’s how it is for NZ cricketers, they have to get the silver medal twice before they eventually win. In three years time, hopefully I am still on the team and we can rectify that.”
