Hamilton: New Zealand captain Kane Williamson doesn’t want to read too much into the T20 series win over India, especially in the context of the upcoming World Cup and feels the 2-1 result was an ‘isolated’ one.
Williamson said the series win was a big confidence booster for his side and their main aim coming into the rubber was just to gel as a unit. “We were sitting down and looking at what can we get at the end out of the series. It’s just about each game as it comes. As I said, we are looking at this series as an isolated series,” he said after the four-wicket win in the third T20 Sunday.
“We just don’t want to sit down and ask ourselves what we want to see in terms of endpoint, we just wanted to gel as a group, play the sort of cricket we wanted to play and I think we did see that. The first game was a very good performance. It’s not always going to happen in T20 cricket and we saw that in the second game,” he said.
India savoured a historic Test and ODI bilateral series win in Australia before recording their biggest ODI series win on New Zealand soil. A first-ever T20 series win would have been icing on the cake but the hosts held their nerves to pull off a thrilling victory.
Williamson was full of praise for his teammates. “Both teams were playing well so to come down to the decider and see a game what we saw tonight was brilliant and great for us as a unit to go through all these experiences and come out on top in a really tight match,” he said. “I thought the guys held their nerves in the second half where it was difficult. India came out and played some fantastic cameos but we were able to get those wickets at key moments.”
Highlighting the importance of the series win, Williamson said it is not easy to get the better of India, who boasts of a strong batting line-up. “You need to take wickets against this Indian side because we know how much power they have and how deep their batting line-up is. India is a very strong side because of their depth, their batting line-up. They do enjoy chasing and it’s always a threat,” he added.