Mumbai, Mar. 21 (ANI): That New Zealand cricket team coach John Wright hates losing is obvious, but what winds him up more than anything else, is when his side loses badly, especially when the loss comes just before the quarterfinals at a World Cup courtesy of an all-too familiar batting order collapse.
"We need to show more application to stay at the wicket. We've got the shot making, but if we have to have the application to take the game deep. If we don't score runs, we'll go home, it's as simple as that," stuff.co.nz quotes Wright as saying in the foyer of the hotel where he and the team are staying.
Wright doesn't do flashy. He's not interested in beautiful shots for six or rapid-fire fifties.
He simply wants to see his batsmen fight when their backs are against the wall.
"You just want batters who are desperate to make runs and want to work on their games all the time to make themselves better players," he says.
"It's frustrating when you see the same errors repeated over and over again. You must learn from your mistakes and that's all I want really," he says.
When Wright took control of the Black Caps just before Christmas, they had just returned from India with the dubious record of having lost 11 straight one-day matches.
Since then, they've beaten Pakistan three times in six matches as well as Kenya, Zimbabwe and Canada.
They've improved, no doubt. But the same fragilities in the batting order that were noticeable during the losing streak have surfaced twice already at this World Cup in their limp losses to Australia and Sri Lanka.
And as everyone knows - Wright most certainly does - you don't win a tournament like this batting badly.
"I think we are making progress but that will be judged in the longer term," Wright says of his first three months in charge.
If Wright can get this New Zealand team to beat South Africa in Dhaka on Friday night, a few rival sides would certainly sit up and take notice. (ANI)
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