13 March - Wellington - New Zealand coach Jacob Oram post-match press conference
Reporter: It was looking very promising after 16 overs or so - how do you sort of sum up the match in general?
Jacob Oram: I hope you mean 16 overs of the bowling side of things. Look, I thought it was even more than that. I think for the first 30 - 35 overs we were well ahead of the game - I think off the top of my head. The Australians still had a run rate under four. But Carey and McGrath started off, they flipped the switch and we found it hard to flip their switch back and then obviously Gardner's innings blazed their cameo. We talk a lot about momentum in all sport really, but they'd swung it back the other way and so I thought as well Darcy Brown bowled exceptionally well, swung the ball - it had good control, pretty good pace so - they put us under some pressure in the game and we weren’t able to respond to their pressure they applied on us.
Reporter: I think they scored 105 of the last team - does it put a focus on your death bowling?
Oram: Look, it's a one-off game. Yeah, if you look at this in a vacuum, the simple answer is yes. But we've been doing okay with the ball, not great - I won't say but we've been going okay with the ball and it's a matter of us making sure that we look at this match and learn from those mistakes. And today, those 10 overs, the death period was a problem - It's not necessary that our plans were wrong. It's just I think the execution sometimes - well not sometimes, it is always the hardest thing to do is execute stuff you talk about, you know we had a drop catch, nearly had some opportunities. But when you're getting hit for boundaries to the opposite side of where your defenders are or your boundary riders are - that always makes things difficult, so we didn't quite get it right today. As I said it doesn't make the plans wrong and makes execution wrong.
Reporter: 270- What were your confidence levels about chasing that down?
Oram: Actually, really good. And it's a number of factors. We’ve chase 270 twice against India down in Queenstown amid series, admittedly a very different bowling attack – India obviously spin dominant – Australia has quality spinners as well, but some very good pacers at the top of the innings as well but after chasing those big totals in Queenstown as well as 300 plus in the warm up match against Australia, we felt good about it. Our batters had been having it well. They've been carrying us for a few games this summer. And I thought it would be okay. But you know, when you lose three, four or five wickets that early then you're always behind the game and we tried to get a partnership going with Katie Martin and Amy Satterwhite, but a bridge too far.
Reporter: How does this leave here? Your World Cup campaign on your hands, but could be a good come down to the net run rate, so yeah. How you feeling about what's to come?
Oram: I hope it's not net run rate -following today's fixture. Look after the loss to West Indies, we knew and we had really tough games to come - like today, like India the other day that we came out on top, like South Africa in three or four days’ time like England, next weekend at Eden Park. There's some huge games coming up. It's getting to the point of must win - You know, which we are midway through our games for the tournament. So it's not an ideal position to know that every game is potentially and that's a key word - must win, but we found ourselves losing two out of four and it's just reality so we've got to suck it up and make sure that we're able to win the rest of the game so that we do take their run rate out of contention, we just get through based on points from winning games.
Reporter: I guess the nature of World Cup - you know, you get back on the horse, you've only got four days. How tough of a mental hurdle to get over first match in four days.
Oram: We've just had a little chat with the head coach Bob Carter downstairs and you know, it wasn't one of those hairdryer moments. It was like you know, the proverbial happens - You know, we didn't front up to the second half of the game in particular. But with that in mind, with a game in only a matter of days’ time. We need to learn from it and move on and make sure that we're ready to go for South Africa - you know we won't face Australia again until the semi’s or the final, so we need to take away what we need to from this game and make sure that we’re ready for South Africa - which will be a different kettle of fish. but we're going to learn but we're also going to move on pretty quick.
Reporter: Just two quick points. For me. First of all, can you shed any light on the situation was with Katie when she seemed to have a bit of an injury or a head issue?
Oram: Yeah I'm not quite sure myself to be honest. It was an interesting one. I know she had a bit of a headache and a bit dizzy or something like that. So not quite sure myself. Obviously I hope it's not something that anything like concussion, that there becomes a multiple day thing because we need her obviously for that South African game on Thursday. But at this moment, I'm probably not the best one to ask but you know, hopefully not too bad.
Reporter: So you touched on sort of things that correlate with this, but the margin of defeat is one thing, but I guess a manner of defeat in that second innings is another thing to address.
Oram: The manner- Yeah, look, as I see right at the start, I think for 30-35 overs we were ahead of the game, and I was very happy with their performance. We let it slip towards the back end of their innings. Like we discussed, I think it was more 15 overs when as I said the Australians flipped the switch and they were able to grab control and momentum of the game and then they continued that into the bowling. Look. All I can do is reiterate what I said before is that the manner is not great. The margin is not great. By great I don't mean large, but the manner is not great. But we've got to make sure that we take what we have to out of this game and we move on because in four days’ time we've got a different opponent, we've got a must win game, we've got a different ground, a different pitch which we won on only matter of three days ago. So we've just got to get going in this tournament again and make sure that South Africa England and also Pakistan are victories for us.
Reporter: How tricky is it for Sophie when she managing six or seven different bowlers – we saw Maddy with an over left up her sleeve, Lea was left with one - having a lot of options is a good thing but can sometimes be a tricky thing.
Oram: Great question. Yeah, well, I haven't actually spoken specifically to Sophie about that following today's game. It's only been 15 minutes since we finished but I would suggest - Yeah, it'd be hard because you've got a whole lot of bowlers who you can make an argument for all of them to be bowling at set times of the game. You know, and that's without our Sophie bowling herself because of a little quad niggle. So yeah, at the moment, it's probably pretty tough. I mean, I personally would have loved to have seen Lea and Amelia give those last - I think they both bowled nine so to get their last over in each, but not to be - I have full faith in – Jess Kerr has been really good at the death for us throughout the summer and Hannah Rowe has shown enough with the ball that I think she deserved a go towards the end – look everyone got a bit attacked today in those last 10 – 12 overs, so I think it's tough to you know, throw too many stones at those bowlers who bowled at the death, but we've got to make sure that our best bowlers are bowling the most overs at the key times. But with that many options and allrounders in the side especially with Sophie at the top and Melia - even you saw Amy Satterwhite bowling a handful overs against Bangladesh and she bats at number four - the options are plentiful and and it's a good and a bad thing for the captain I'm sure.
Reporter: What do you make of Darcy Brown she's certainly an incredible talent.
Oram: Look I've only seen her a handful of times. She played once against us last summer when the Australians toured here up at Mount Maunganui and I recall that time bowled some short stuff obviously got some place. We saw her as well in Lincoln which well I mean Australia got 320, and we chased it down, one down - so I don't think the bowlers had a great day that day. But today I was very very impressed. I mean as I said earlier she's got really good pace, swings the ball, but the thing that stuck out for me today was her line and length – for me it's one thing to swing the ball, but if you’re swinging it you know to sit at the right stump where batters can just throw their hands and carve it away over point or cover - then it's no use to anyone, but today she just hovered around there – that were off stump just outside off, and if you've got a little bit of shape away then you bring you know the keeper and slips into place which is what we saw with Amelia’s dismissal which incidentally is probably the widest one she bowled today - but that's what happens when you're bowling well, you drag batters into those shots. And she bowled really well today
Reporter: My question is even during the match there was a time line because of a great fielding display all around in the first inning. A word on that
Oram: Yeah on the fielding - Yeah, good and bad. Look. We've got some serious athletes in our team but you know, we've dropped a lot of catches this summer. And this isn't - I mean, people have seen this on TVs, against India we've shared some catches at the same time, we've taken some absolute screamers, I think you saw today – Maddy Green’s catch shows just how good an athlete and a fielder she is and we've got a number of them on the boundary - Hayley Jensen's amazing across the ground with a good arm, Hannah Rowe - You know, but then we see Hannah caught behind a catch today and she's normally safe - So at the moment it's a little bit good and bad for us. It's like one step forward two back. We know that to go far in this tournament or to go far as a team we need to field as well and as consistently well as we can and at the moment we're just a bit hamstrung by some mistakes which are not like us and I can only put that down to a little bit of pressure that is a big stage like the World Cup and we saw a couple of instances today where balls got away from fielders and went to the boundaries for four - which is uncharacteristic. But again, just potentially a byproduct of these big stages.
Reporter: Tell me about the World Cup pressure. Do you think that that's catching up with the New Zealand at this stage?
Oram: Yeah. No, no chance of that happening. Look, it's a tough schedule. You know, we've been up and down the country. And so it should be you know, we're the host country, we're playing in all our host cities. We want to get around the country and play in front of as many fans, as we can. But we're up and down the country, flights every third day, bags out here and there. But we can't complain – we knew about the schedule 6 -12 months ago, and it is what it is – we knew who we were playing and where, so we're able to you know to plan and predict what was going to happen - we knew the conditions, so it's a good and a bad thing in terms of the pressure the World Cup. Only the players can answer that, I played in a few myself and what I now know from a player to a coach is that - it doesn't matter what the hell a coach or a support staff member says- it's about what's going on between the ears of the player and so I think that sort of the pressure questions are for the players only and that’s where you get the honest answers.
Reporter: Just on the batting obviously - there was no real lasting partnerships there and obviously early wickets, what are you going to do to move around - you want to sort of flush [inaudible 12:30]
Oram: Yeah we preach with our batting partnerships in particular - I mean partnerships equals two batters being set, two batters scoring runs and partnerships generally - especially if you get two or three good partnerships in a game, that generally means you’ll get a good team total. So for us partnerships are key - and we basically only had two mediocre ones today with Martin and Satterwhite and Satterwhite and Tahuhu - so that wasn't good enough.
The second part of it is that we just lost too many wickets early and I'm keen to not you know, completely throw the batters under the bus, because I think they've been so good for us in what we had five games, six games in Queenstown with our grade. You know, we've scored some pretty good runs so far in this World Cup. This is our first real hiccup for the summer and we've got to make sure that we remember the multitude of good things that have happened before this. And we don't just suddenly say that it's, you know, time for changes or batters need to change their techniques or tactics - I don't think it's about that. I think it's actually as I've said a couple times already- learning but parking and moving on from this and making sure that you know - as I said before, those eight or nine quality games are remembered a lot more than one off game. So that's for me to focus on the batting side of things.
Reporter: My question here is about chasing not just for New Zealand, but in general in the tournament. Are the teams overestimating the ease of chasing a total in a World Cup type situation - we've seen India to opt to chase and then falter – you opted to chase a couple of times, it didn't go to plan. Is that something that you and teams in general need to look at going forward?
Oram: I won't speak for India, that would intimidate me. But I think from our point of view - you know today was not about necessarily chasing, today was about a new wicket. The conditions we had, you know we had rain around yesterday, we weren't able to train and the covers were on for a lot of the day. The forecast today was actually a lot worse than what it was – it actually turned - apart from the wind. It was actually pretty okay, so it was a lot of factors going into it aside from just chasing or sitting.
I mean, it's easy in hindsight to say yeah, you should have batted first and got runs on the board - But your question is not invalid - I think there is something in chasing and we mentioned before about you know, the pressure of the World Cup and I think there's something there - Absolutely. I mean, people know that this is the big stage, the big dance and there's a lot riding on these games. These points, obviously everyone's watching. I mean, this is a huge tournament, the ICC have done a fantastic job putting it on. It's great to get more people on the ground today. And so you're chasing even a score like 220 that we saw England try to chase down against West Indies provide some challenges. So I think there's something in it, but today for us it was about utilizing the conditions and as I've said a couple of times I think we did that pretty well for 30-35 overs and then just let our guard down at the same time that I think Australia decided to front up and whack some fours.