I learnt a lot seeing Daniel Vettori bowl: Mitchell Santner

Mitchell Santner is new to International cricket. The 24-year-old, who made his debut last year in the month of June against England, still seemed to have not done anything significant in his career so far. Not many knew about the player who has played only 3 Tests, 14 ODIs and just 7 T20Is with a limited amount of success.

However, his recent exploits in the ongoing ICC World T20 has turned on the spotlight on him making everybody keen on knowing who Mitchell Santner is.

In a candid interview with sports website Sportskeeda, Mitchell Santner talked about his match-winning performance at Nagpur against India, New Zealand’s new Kane Williamson, discussed his plans for the World T20.

Santner talked about adapting to the Indian conditions and talked about the improvisations he did in the first two games he played against India and Australia.

“Yeah, one needs to adapt, especially over here when there’s a little bit of extra turn in the games that we’ve just played in. It’s more about delivering at a faster pace in order to get more purchase from the wicket, something that I did in Dharamsala. Back home, you might try things a little more differently because there’s not much spin on offer.”

The left-arm spinner, who seldom bowled on spinner friendly pitches, was welcomed with a rank turner at Nagpur when New Zealand met India in their Super 10 stage opener.

“There was quite a lot of spin there, and it was a hard surface as well.

At the half way stage we felt that we might have been a little short of par, but knew that the conditions would change a bit and the hardness of the wicket would assist the spinners in getting bounce along with the turn. It was about bowling change-ups, and bowling with extra pace. We put pressure on the batsmen by bowling in reasonably good areas, although I think the Indians could have got some more runs.”

Santner took full advantage of the conditions on offer and returned with match-winning figures of 4/11 to star in the superb victory. His scalps included Rohit Sharma, Hardik Pandya, Suresh Raina and MS Dhoni.

He spoke about what plans he had exactly while bowling to the Indian batsmen who are traditionally known to be good players of spin.

“They are world-class players of spin and usually play you very well using their feet. You make plans for each batsman, and you need to try and stick to your plans. I had a couple of plans, including wanting to control the runs, but it all comes down to match situation.”

“They are wristy, they play some incredible shots off some good balls so you can’t really get much wrong while bowling to them. You have to stick to your strengths and hope that they make some mistake. On pitches in India you can tend to be aggressive as a spin bowler, but it’s more important to know when to be aggressive.”

“Against such quality players you mostly need to play a defensive role, unless you have a team strategy where you want to be more attacking.”

New leader Kane Williamson has so impressed everyone with his captaincy skills and tactic. Santner also stated that the whole team likes his confidence and has full faith in him.

“Kane is a young and energetic skipper. We all have full confidence in him like he has full confidence in the team. He is very new to the job, and will only get better as he captains more and more. So let’s see.”

Finally, whether he can fill Daniel Vettori’s boots, he said, “I get that a lot. He’s obviously been a world class bowler from New Zealand for many years now. These are indeed big shoes to fill.”

“We both might be left-arm spinners, but we are slightly different players. I have always admired him growing up, learnt a lot seeing him bowl – if I can bowl half as good as him, I’d be happy I think.”