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New Zealand’s bowlers have been living in the harshest corner for modern T20 cricket: when the ball is flying everywhere and plans feel like they are expiring with each ball.
Ahead of the next match against India, bowling coach Jacob Oram said the biggest headache isn’t just the runs conceded, it is how hard it is to even locate a clear weakness against an in-form Abhishek Sharma.
“The answer to that is simple: it is very difficult,” Oram said during a press conference. “When you look at his strike rate, it’s hard, first, to identify any real weakness in his game, and then, secondly, to execute a plan against him. Execution is the hardest thing in cricket, whether you’re batting or bowling.”
Abhishek Sharma’s sustained aggression has set the tone for a series in which India’s batters have forced New Zealand into constant recalculation. At that pace, every adjustment carries risk: miss full by a fraction and it is in the crowd, offer width and it disappears.
Oram’s view was that the battle is as much mental as tactical. A plan can be sound, but it’s the next ball, delivered with a steady head, that decides whether it survives contact with a batter in full flow.
“At same time, when there is a bit of chaos out in the middle, with the ball flying everywhere, it takes real composure to stay calm, remain controlled, remember the plans and then execute them. But this is all part of the learning process. This is exactly what this series was about, and despite the results, if we come out of it better for the experience and are somewhere near the Super Eights, the semi-finals and the final in March, then this period will have been hugely valuable for us, because we will have taken so much from it,” he added.
Jacob Oram framed the bruises of this series as rehearsal for March, when New Zealand will want their bowlers thinking clearly deep into the Super Eights and beyond.
For now, the immediate reality remains the same: calm is not optional. It has to be manufactured, ball after ball, even when the contest looks like it is being played at someone else’s speed.
That “learning process” line is the thread New Zealand are trying to hold onto as they look beyond the scoreline. The series has exposed how quickly a single over can swing in this format, but it has also underlined what Oram believes separates good attacks for great ones: staying calm enough to execute, even when the game refuses to slow down.
