After getting bundled out for 45 in a Test match against South Africa at Cape Town in 2013, the New Zealand cricket team sat down, worked on their weakness and came out with flying colours in the following year.
By far, New Zealand have been the team of the year in 2014. They looked convincingly better than all the other teams across all the formats of the game. The icing on the cake for the Kiwis in 2014 would have been winning the 2014 WorldT20 where they were done in by Rangana Herath’s spell of 5-3, which stopped them from progressing to the semis. The Kiwis won the Test series against India and Sri Lanka at (leading 1-0 with 1 match still to go) at home and won the Test series in West Indies and drew the three match series 1-1 against Pakistan in UAE.
In the limited overs format, New Zealand started off the year with a bang courtesy Corey Anderson’s 36 ball century that helped the Kiwis to defeat West Indies by 159 runs in Queenstown and ended the series 2-2. It is followed by a 4-0 drubbing over India at home, 0-2 loss to South Africa at home and triumphing 3-2 against Pakistan at UAE. The 0-2 loss to the proteas is the only bilateral series loss for the blackcaps this year.
Winning 6 out of 10 Twenty20 Internationals round up their brilliant performances throughout the season. The Kiwis have made sure that they are building a strong side ahead of the 2015 World Cup which they are scheduled to co-host with Australia.
New Zealand players played well as a team, backed each other throughout in tough times which went on to pay off for their success. Brendon McCullum came off age and led by example in the year which saw his rise in the Test cricket. He scored a triple hundred, two double hundreds and a 195 and ended up as becoming the first Kiwi batsman to cross 1000 Test runs in a calendar year. Apart from McCullum, Kane Williamson, Ross Taylor, Tim Southee and Corey Anderson tasted personal success.
With World Cup nearing, the Kiwis are tagged as the brand favourites to lift the trophy in their own backyard.
This is how the Top Ten Eight teams are line up based on their performance in 2014:
- New Zealand
- Sri Lanka
- South Africa
- Australia
- Pakistan
- India
- England
- West Indies