It’s all about enjoying the game

GUYANA: Remember your school playground? Abuzz with joyous cries and impromptu sledging, amid a certain feeling of carelessness, sport takes on a completely different form, as against its professional counterpart.

A New Zealand team practicing sounds exactly like a school playground. Only, there is a complete lack of animosity. You have Shane Bond driving the team bus, Lou Vincent getting inspired by the movie Borad, dressing up in a bikini and doing the hoola in front of the camera as his coach John Bracewell gives an interview and Craig McMillan winning US$50 in a game of poker and never letting his teammates forget about it.

“The thing about our game is that we haven’t relied on one person,” McMillan says. “Some teams rely on one or two players and you know that if you get them out, then the rest of the side is under pressure. The strength for New Zealand is that we have guys from one to 11 who can win a game.”

McMillan, till around six months back, wasn’t even sure of being here. Instead, he was making plans of playing county cricket and watching his mates slog it out in the World Cup. “For me, it’s all about the competition and enjoying the battle,” adds the portly all-rounder, who is a diabetic too.

Indeed, the enjoyment, is very much visible. When the Aussies practice, they are all purpose. With concentration writ large on their faces, the pressure of being the world’s number one side manifests itself in their quest to do everything perfect. In their press briefings, the arrogant swagger announces itself in their talks of world dominance.

The Indian team, by sharp contrast, is normally a picture of consciousness. Wary of the eyes of the media, scared of what different controversy might be cooked up, all that result in anxiousness when they step on the field. The England team is followed by an entourage that is almost as huge as the one that follows the Indians around and the talk is mostly civil.

On Friday, New Zealand took a complete off from practice after being put through the tough rigours at the Guyana National Stadium in Providence. Games devised by the management especially to keep even the injured players in the loop.

They were divided into teams of three. One team included Mason, McCullum, Bond, Gillespie, Martin. The other had Edwards, Oram, Fleming, Marshall and Styris. The final one had McMillan, Vettori, Fulton, Patel and Styris. The game played was a form of relay, only instead of the baton, the ball was used and the main objective was to get the ball from one point to the other as quickly as possible. It was tough, but it was also great fun.

But it’s not like everything has been going just fine for them. They lost Lou Vincent to a broken wrist, Edwards has been injured almost throughout and in the last match, Michael Mason picked up a calf strain after just 1.3 overs, and James Franklin’s migraine acted up after six.

“I don’t know where it came from but it has been pretty disappointing. Before Hobart I hadn’t one for 18 months and the last time was in Zimbabwe during a Test match there,” Franklin says about his migraine. “It has been something that I have been suffering since I was 12 years old. And it has increasingly become more far apart in the spacing. I had one in January and now one here.”

“Our trainer suffers from it too. I get tunnel vision after that and a headache that spikes me in the head. In the drinks break I was fine but when I tried to focus on something it was all blurred. I bowled an over, after that it was all blur and in the later part it was all blue vision,” he adds.

So the problems are there but New Zealand’s manner of dealing with them is not to panic. “The thing about our game so far is that we haven’t relied on any one person,” repeats McMillan.

Surely, the flexibility isn’t making them overconfident? “It’s going to take a number of things to stop Australia from winning the World Cup,” skipper Stephen Fleming takes over. “It’ll be all about assessing the conditions, then playing as well as we can. We’ve done that in the past, and we’re more familiar with them now. We’re really looking forward to playing them because they are the best.”