T20 World Cup 2022, Match 13: New Zealand vs Australia - Who Said What

Team New Zealand completed a thumping victory over the defending champions Australia in both teams' opening encounter of the T20 World Cup 2022 played at the Sydney Cricket Ground on October 22 (Saturday). Batter Devon Conway was adjudged player of the match for his match-winning knock. 

Speaking about the game, the home team won the toss and opted to have a bowl first. However, they received a stern reply from the Kiwi batters as Finn Allen and Conway completely tore the Aussie bowling line-up during the field restrictions. 

Even after Allen got out, Conway (92 off 58) continued his excellent batting and found an able partner in form of the skipper Kane Williamson. Some decent contributions were also given by Glenn Phillips and James Neesham as the batting team finished on exact 200 runs in their allotted 20 overs. 

Australia lost three wickets inside the field restrictions

Chasing 201 to win, the Aussie team had the worst possible start as they lost their top three batters including David Warner, Aaron Finch, and Mitchell Marsh inside the field restrictions. 

The defending champions could not recover from the early jolts despite some decent contributions from Glenn Maxwell and Pat Cummins. For New Zealand, pacer Tim Southee was the pick of the bowlers as he took three wickets and gave away only six runs in 2.1 overs. Santner also scalped three wickets for his side as New Zealand won the game by a massive margin of 89 runs. 

Winning skipper, Kane Williamson said:

It was one of those days, an outstanding day, the openers set the tone, lots of contributions right through the batting and that was a very good score on this pitch. The bowlers then did well and were well supported in the field. Everyone know their roles in this team, we knew about the quality of their bowling (Australia's), took the game deep and we were very clinical in what we needed to do.

Losing skipper Aaron Finch said:

They certainly did (on the New Zealand openers), they set the tone in the first 4 overs and we didn't recover. Needed a big start, that didn't happen and we were outplayed completely. He got off to a flier (on Finn), we needed early wickets which didn't happen and when we chased, we lost too many wickets, we weren't good enough with the net run-rate taking a bad hit. We play Sri Lanka next, four games left, need to win everything and have some luck on our side.

Player of the match, Devon Conway said:

Special performance by the boys tonight. Credit has to go to Finn, how he started and got the momentum for us, pretty good performance from everyone. It (Finn's knock) was pretty special, I have seen him do it time and time again, young guy in international cricket but he's very explosive and fearless. The way Finn plays his game complements my game and I can just bat around him. The surface was very good to bat on and I thought timing the ball would give you more success. It means a lot to us, especially here at the SCG, to beat Australia on any occasion is big, we will take this momentum into the next game.