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Sunday, July 27, 2025

NZ prepares for Gayle

by

20150316

WELLING­TON–The un­de­feat­ed New Zealand squad is prepar­ing to take on Chris Gayle in the World Cup quar­ter­fi­nals, re­gard­less of any un­cer­tain­ty over the fit­ness of the star West In­dies bats­man.

Gayle missed the West In­dies last pool match against the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates on Sun­day as the back in­jury which has trou­bled him for most of the past year flared again. The sever­i­ty of the in­jury is un­clear and it may be the West In­dies sim­ply rest­ed him to be sure of his avail­abil­i­ty for the quar­ter­fi­nals.

But New Zealand is tak­ing no chances and when it car­ries out its rou­tine scout­ing of the West In­dies team this week, Gayle's po­ten­tial in­flu­ence will be a ma­jor fo­cus.

"Ob­vi­ous­ly every­one knows what Chris Gayle can do and he is one of the biggest match-win­ners in world crick­et, so it's im­por­tant we put a lit­tle bit of fo­cus on him," New Zealand bats­man Kane Williamson said yes­ter­day. "But it is more im­por­tant we fo­cus on our­selves ... and what we want to do.

"When he plays well, he takes any team down in world crick­et. But ... we've got play­ers who are world-class play­ers as well that can take games away so it's go­ing to be ex­cit­ing game be­tween two teams with match-win­ners."

Gayle has the World Cup record for high­est score – his 215 against Zim­bab­we – but oth­er­wise had scores in pool match­es of 36, 4, 3, and 21. He of­ten strug­gled to get through the crit­i­cal first 10 overs, af­ter which scor­ing can be be­come eas­i­er.

New Zealand on Sat­ur­day will re­alise the ne­ces­si­ty of re­mov­ing Gayle ear­ly and will re­ly on the abil­i­ty of open­ing bowlers Trent Boult and Tim Southee to make that break­through. If Gayle is able to set­tle, he will be es­pe­cial­ly dan­ger­ous. But Williamson stressed the ne­ces­si­ty in knock­out play of cop­ing with any even­tu­al­i­ty.

"It's im­por­tant you are re­laxed and calm be­cause that's when you play your best crick­et," he said. "With it be­ing on the line we need to look at it with free­dom so we can ex­press our­selves in high-pres­sure sit­u­a­tions."

Williamson said New Zealand's six games had all been very dif­fer­ent, but to­geth­er had pro­vid­ed the per­fect prepa­ra­tion for the knock­out stage.

"It's nice to have all those ex­pe­ri­ences go­ing in­to the quar­ter­fi­nal but we need to keep play­ing with that calm ag­gres­sion we have had in the group stage," he said. "Go­ing in­to a quar­ter­fi­nal we are not ex­pect­ing every­thing to fall in­to place per­fect­ly. We need to roll with the mo­men­tum shifts and stay calm." (CMC)


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