Batting failures concern for Mike Hesson with World Cup looming ahead

New Zealand head coach Mike Hesson has expressed his concern about batting failure post New Zealand’s 3-2 loss to England. New Zealand batsmen have failed to come good throughout the ODI series.

Further, New Zealand’s batting lineup let them down once again in the final ODI as they were staggering at 92 for 6. However, some useful contribution from Mitchell Santer helped them post a modest total of 223. However, it was a cake walk for England batsmen, who banked Jonny Bairstow’s hundred to win the series.

New Zealand will face England in a two-match Test series following the 3-2 loss in the fifty-overs series.

Didn’t fire as a batting unit:

Hesson believes they failed to come good as a batting unit and didn’t utilise the power at the lower end.

“As a batting unit we didn’t fire in terms of the balance we wanted to put out there,” Hesson said. “We went in with a batting-heavy lineup and it’d be fair to say we never got ourselves in a position to utilize that. We didn’t allow ourselves to use the power we have at the back end. That’s something we are going to have to look at,” he added.

Although there was individual brilliance, the batsmen failed to complement each other. Meanwhile, Ross Taylor’s individual runs rescued the Kiwis but they lost the final ODI in his absence.

“We’ve got three guys who average over 40 in ODI cricket (Martin Guptill, Kane Williamson, and Ross Taylor) and others, like Tom Latham, making good contributions. But we’re not combining as well as we should,” Hesson noted.

Meanwhile, New Zealand needs to reshuffle their top-order with Colin Munro failing to replicate his T20I form. However, Munro recently decided to quit red-ball cricket to focus more on the shorter formats. He notched up only 56 runs in the series with a couple of ducks while Martin Guptill also failing to score big.

Plenty of thinking to be done:

With 15 months left for the premier ODI tournament, New Zealand will not play in ODI series for the next six months. Following that away series against Pakistan, New Zealand will then play 11 ODIs at home.

“We don’t play one-day cricket for at least six to eight months, so there’s plenty of thinking to be done,” Hesson admitted. “We have an A-series between now and then which will allow us to look at other players, but I think the players based on previous performances earned the right to play this series. Collectively we weren’t where we needed to be so we’ll certainly have to look at the balance of things,” he added.

However, Hesson maintained they would not risk with Taylor and rush him the Test series. Meanwhile, BJ Watling is expected to return to the squad after missing the Windies series.

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