A win against England on Friday would have made New Zeland’s life a lot easier but now they have to wait for the result from the Pakistan vs Sri Lanka game on Saturday.
England’s win on Friday has kept Pakistan alive in the semis race and a big win against Sri Lanka in the Super Eight clash with a superior run-rate could help them book a spot in the last-four stage of the T20 World Cup 2026.
New Zealand skipper Mitchell Santner also admits that a win over the already qualified England would have made their lives lot easier.
“That was a good match. Obviously, it would have made our lives easy if we won. But again, we played a pretty good game. There’s obviously moments, both with the bat and the ball, that you can probably look back on and kind of turn the game a little bit,” Santner said at the post-match presentation.
Santner said New Zealand despite a good start failed to capitalise in the last overs and push for total more than 175.
“But again, credit to England and the way they played. We set up a good platform to target the last few overs and lost a few there. We only kind of scraped to 160. It could have easily been 170, 175. But then obviously at the end, you need 40 off the last three.
“And yeah, the way they were able to take down the offing and obviously at the end was good. Obviously, the other innings we kind of lost wickets throughout and then, weren’t able to get to a score through, I guess, the last four overs. But, tonight we kind of set a platform, not to the second time out in a pretty good spot. “And then, maybe took some tough options straight off the time out. But again, you need to kind of get runs and we were thinking at that stage 170, 175 would have been a really good score,” he said.
How do the math add for Pakistan’s qualification to the semis? If Pakistan bat first, they need to win by 65 runs and if they chase they need to overhaul the target in 13.1 overs to surpass New Zealand net run-rate.
England captain Harry Brook lauded Rehan Ahmed for his superb all-round efforts in the match where he scored an unbeaten 7-ball 19 and also picked two wickets. Will Jacks was the Player of the Match for his 32 not out off 18 balls.
“We’ve seen what Reh (Ahmed) can do in the nets and he’s gone out and played beautifully, taken it away from them. Along with Jacksy (Jacks), his fourth MOM, pretty happy with that performance. We said at the start, we’re going to select on conditions and we thought today was the perfect opportunity to bring him (Ahmed) in and he did an amazing job.
“New Zealand are a very strong side, we played against them before Christmas, they do everything so well, running between wickets and then some extreme power,” said Brook.
Brook also extended support to a struggling Jos Butler who got out for another duck on Friday.
“Been a lot said, he’s (Buttler) played 150 games for England and people need to take a step back from that. He’s in a rut now but that’s an exciting thing, to know what he could produce in the next couple of games. He’s a phenomenal player and I’ve got no doubts about him.”
