NEWS
Follow UsNew Zealand, for the major part of the run-chase, seemed to be playing catch up but one big over from James Neesham in which he attacked Chris Jordan to get 23 runs, helped them massively to overcome the England challenge and reach their first-ever T20 World Cup final. One of the central figures in the win, Daryl Mitchell played a whirlwind knock of 72 runs off 47 balls to win the Player of the Match award and he was understandably ecstatic following the win.
"It was a bit of a whirl at the end there. I couldn't remember what was going on, but I'm happy I got the job done. It was a challenging surface, with the new ball, and it was two-paced. The way Conway set the platform and Neesh hit a few out of the ground was amazing. We knew one or two good overs would do it, and we got the momentum back thanks to Neesham's hitting," Mitchell said in the post-match presentation.
Mitchell had his parents present at the venue to watch him play and the all-rounder, who was promoted in the batting order for the World Cup, was very happy about the same.
"With what's going on in the world, for my dad to travel halfway round the world and be here is pretty cool," Mitchell concluded.
'Will give everything we've got'
"Look, we're a bunch of Kiwis. There's only 5 million of us, so we're obviously very proud to be representing our country. Yeah, obviously we've had some success in the last few years," said Mitchell in the press conference as per ICC.
"But we're going to enjoy the win tonight, make sure that obviously, we celebrate that, but then we move on pretty quickly. We know that we have a final on Sunday, and whoever we're taking on should be good fun. "We'll give it everything we've got, but at the end of the day there's certain things you can't control, so we'll see what happens," he added.
Mitchell also did not think that the target of 167 was out of their grasp at any point of time.
"It probably sounds weird, but it never felt like it was out of our grasp. I think especially with that smaller side boundary on one side, we knew that there were going to be matchups there that might suit us towards the end, and look, we were obviously very lucky at times," said Mitchell.
"A couple sailed over the ropes that could have been a metre shorter and we're all out, but at the same time we always knew that as long as we kept sort of just within the certain numbers that we felt comfortable with that we were always a chance. "I thought the way that Neesh came out and really dominated that one over really set the momentum heading into those last few, so yeah, take my cap off to him. He played a hell of a knock," he added.
New Zealand will now take on the winner of the Pakistan vs Australia encounter on Sunday at the Dubai International Cricket Stadium.