The Pink Report

A Quest In Queenstown

In 2007 I travelled with the All Blacks at the Rugby World Cup. Sitting in on team meetings and even a selectors’ meeting as they picked their test team, over the five weeks it was an extraordinary opportunity to understand how high profile players worked behind otherwise closed doors, and to see for myself the kind of weird team and individual pressures they were under as All Blacks and tournament favourites with that notorious World Cup albatross dragging on their necks.

For all of that, I thought the scene that best encapsulated it all turned out to be a very public one, the morning after they had lost the quarterfinal to France. The doors swung open to the post-mortem media session where almost all the players were gathered in a soulless hotel conference room just outside Cardiff. Their backs were literally to the wall, squatting down with chins on their chest desperately hoping none of the journos would pick them to make a comment.

Loss and victory are the eternal poles of sporting emotions and although smart players know to keep their victory highs in check, managing your headspace after a particularly gutting loss is obviously the more difficult task. After losing against the Stags in Whangarei on Wednesday, the Yahoo!Xtra Northern Knights’ dressing room was like a morgue, the guys almost in shock at having lost control of the match.

In most circumstances you’d view a target of 247 as gettable and, although they’d lost a couple too many wickets for comfort, at the 35-over mark of their chase I’m sure the Knights camp would have been feeling confident they’d be hosting the minor 3v4 playoff match on Sunday. The run rate required had held steady around the run-a-ball mark with a batting powerplay still to come - and the Stags had been a mixed bag with the ball. The young quick Adam Milne had enjoyed a destructive spell starting in the eighth over that included three successive maiden overs, the last of them a double wicket maiden. But although Noema-Barnett was tidy at times, no one else really turned the screws through the middle. BJ Watling and Pete McGlashan were scoring freely, running well, working the singles on the large ground and trucking their way to an ND record sixth wicket partnership of 150.

The Knights had talked a lot during the week about the importance of someone in their top four batting through: statistically it’s not often that a team loses a match when one or two of its best batsmen have batted 35 overs or more in a game. I’d hazard a guess that the BLACKCAPS have been talking about the exact same things inside their dressing sheds. Take BLACKCAP Scotty Styris out of the equation, having played just the four rounds for the Knights, and statistically opening bat BJ stands out as the top performer from the regular domestic competition, averaging 59.20 from his six bats. Wednesday’s must-win situation was his moment to deliver the big one and he fronted on cue, batting the whole 50 overs for the century that gave his side a chance.

So boy, did I feel for BJ after the match. There’s nothing that feels more hollow than scoring a hundred in a losing side, so instead of being able to enjoy his sixth domestic one-day century, unbeaten at that and carrying his bat, he cut a stone quiet figure afterwards - worried by his back injury and no doubt still replaying the last few overs of the match over and over in his head, kicking himself for not being able to connect a few more times and probably blaming himself for the team’s result. In the space of the last 15 overs, the Knights had gone from the brink of hosting a home semi to only just scraping into the playoffs - now with the less appealing task of travelling to Queenstown to face the Volts in a sudden death away game.

BJ might not fully appreciate it, but he did a commendable job given the circumstances. That’s because in the 36th over he’d had to call for a runner as his lower back started to twinge. Batting with a runner is generally a recipe for impending disaster: all of a sudden you’ve got a lot more to concentrate on than just hitting the ball and taking off. Players start performing a complicated square dance; instinctively forget they’re not meant to run; their running partner sometimes out of eye-line or earshot. It’s a run-out waiting to happen and lifts the opposition as they sniff a kill. And, you’ve still got to fight against the complaints of your body to keep striking and punching the ball.

So BJ, Pete McGlashan and runner James Marshall showed very good skills in keeping it all together as the tension mounted, but understandably the scoring had become a little more tentative. By the 42nd over, the required run rate was climbing over eight, but fortunately the Stags dropped a couple of absolute sitters, the last powerplay was lucrative and before long it was down to yet another all-or-nothing last-over finish. Quite incredible to think that all but one of the one-dayers the Knights have played this season have come down to the last few balls - usually with either Bradley Scott or Graeme Aldridge stuck with coming up with a Lance Cairns special.

It’s a bit like playing lotto at that stage and this time the winning numbers just didn’t pop up. The experience of Michael Mason, often underrated, had shown through when he went for just five singles off his ninth over, then closed his account in the 49th over with a very fine effort - jamming the ball up into the blockhole every time, including one yorker that left Pete McGlashan limping, at a cost of just three runs.

Milne was tossed the ball with the Knights needing 13 off the last over, in which both Pete and Graeme Aldridge (run out) fell. Cue Bradley Scott, not for the first time this summer trying to slog the penultimate ball for six to tie the game, but that ball was good enough only for a single. So that left poor ol’ BJ on strike for the last rites, hoping for the incongruous six which never came. Gutted.

All the Knights owe Lou Vincent a beer, because meanwhile at the Basin Reserve the Aucklander’s hot form had continued with a dazzling hundred, underpinning a 300-plus target that proved way too much for the Firebugs (as I now refer to them). So at least the playoff berth was assured, but as I say, it was a dark dressing room afterwards up in Whangarei. Failing sucks.

So this Sunday at 11am in Queenstown the Knights will be at the last chance saloon, looking for the consistent, commanding team performance that’s eluded them so far in the competition. It’s the steeper route, but not beyond them. Certainly it’s not impossible: ND has won a one-day championship from the fourth qualifier spot before. Personally, I think doing it the hard way as the fourth qualifier - needing to win three sudden-death games on the trot to defend the title - isn’t a bad proposition for a team that could benefit from playing a bit more cricket after quite a stop-start summer.

The trick is to forget the odds - and to quickly leave the emotional battering of the previous loss or your own inconsistency behind you. Confidence in sport is a bit like going on a date: try too hard, sweat too much and it’s probably not gonna work out too well. Confidence and that winning feeling come when you can relax enough to be yourself, then you're in a position to shine. The guys need to start a fresh page when they regroup on Friday: no backs to the wall, chins up and they'll be in with a good shout.