The New Zealand versus Bangladesh match will not decide who gets to reach the semi-finals, but it does give the side winning the match a chance, depending on what happens in the England versus Australia game to be played this Saturday.
If Australia beat England, then regardless of what happens in this match, both Bangladesh and New Zealand are out. But if England was to beat Australia, then the winner of this match goes through – as simple as that.
This is hence a crucial game and both teams will want to do their very best. New Zealand have generally been the better team of the two and have most of the games played between the two sides.
Bangladesh captain Mashrafe Mortaza spoke about his expectations for this game: “The way we are playing the last two, three years, there’s a lot of matches we have won and also a few matches we should have won but couldn’t. We know if we can create chances we have to grab them and play hard.”
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Mortaza knows that his future in international cricket is under threat if his team fails to make it to the semi-finals. He has been the worst performing Bangladesh player by far and not performed with either the bat or bowl. His captaincy has looked short on inspiration and his pace is almost non-existent. It seems like this team has been carrying him when they can scarcely afford to.
As for New Zealand, they could have won the game against Australia before it was washed off, but played poorly against England. They will want pick themselves up for this game.
Speaking to the media before the clash, New Zealand fast bowler Trent Boult said, “I think there was some big positives to take out of the performance against England. We took wickets through the whole innings and kept them to definitely a score that was chase-able.”
New Zealand will depend heavily on their top 3 of Martin Guptill, Luke Ronchi and Kane Williamson to give them a good start at the top of the order. Williamson has two big scores to his name already in this tournament but Guptill has not done much.
Bangladesh will depend on Tamim Iqbal, who has done very well in this tournament, making scores of 128 and 95 so far. But the others have failed. Bangladesh will want Imrul Kayes, Shakib Al Hasan and Soumya Sarkar and Sabbir Rahman to step up.
The Teams
New Zealand: 1 Martin Guptill, 2 Luke Ronchi (wk), 3 Kane Williamson (capt), 4 Ross Taylor, 5 Neil Broom, 6 James Neesham, 7 Corey Anderson, 8 Mitchell Santner, 9 Adam Milne, 10 Tim Southee, 11 Trent Boult
Bangladesh: 1 Tamim Iqbal, 2 Soumya Sarkar, 3 Imrul Kayes, 4 Mushfiqur Rahim (wk), 5 Mahmudullah, 6 Shakib Al Hasan, 7 Mosaddek Hossain, 8 Mehedi Hasan, 9 Mashrafe Mortaza (capt), 10 Rubel Hossain, 11 Mustafizur Rahman
Match conditions
Cardiff has always been a batting paradise and provided it doesn’t rain, we will have a high scoring contest.
Watch New Zealand play Bangladesh at 3 pm today on Star Sports!
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