On 57 off 38, punishing any error in length until then and now needing seven off two, this time Neesham couldn’t send a thigh-high full toss into the stands. It just got too close to him; he was probably setting himself up to punish an error on the shorter side. He ended up hitting straight to deep midwicket, and went back for a desperate second because he had a No. 10 for company.
The throw came in a little slow, making Josh Inglis move off his mark to collect. Still Neesham needed a dive and a prayer. He ended up diving in pure desperation, even as Inglis dived simultaneously towards the stumps and caught him short. Neesham had to go through the agony of watching the replay on the big screen as the third umpire decided on it.
It was enough to remind Neesham of the 2019 World Cup final when Martin Guptill went for a similar second to try to win it but ended up run-out, tying the game but losing the final on boundary countback. Does the game really have to be that cruel?
“Actually, that [2019 final] was the first thing I thought of when I was coming off, that it’s going to look very, very similar,” Neesham said. “I mean that’s the nature isn’t it? You want to be desperate, I suppose, in those situations and you’d much rather get run out on your stomach than on your feet.”
For Neesham this would have meant all the more in a game where the sides remained neck and neck for a long time. After overs 40, 42 and 44, both sides had scored the same number of runs. Then it was in the 48th over, bowled by Neesham, that Australia pulled away.
Neesham came on to bowl for the first time only in the 45th over, covering for the injured Lockie Ferguson. He looked to bowl into the pitch and take the pace off, taking out Glenn Maxwell immediately.
In the next over, Neesham nearly had Josh Inglis caught but Rachin Ravindra dropped him in the deep. Instead of a new batter, Neesham now had Pat Cummins on strike, and he hit him for three sixes. The over went for 27. All the while, as New Zealand stayed abreast with Australia, the question was: who would make up for the Neesham over?
Not long before that World Cup, Neesham had nearly given up on the sport partly because of the vagaries of it. In his recovery, Neesham worked at a start-up that made cow collars. In that job, he could see tangible results for the work he put in, something you don’t often do in cricket. He used to struggle to come to terms with putting in all the hard work but not always getting the results. Living outside the bubble of high-performance teams, and working with a mental skills coach, helped.
Reminded now of that night when he denied Brathwaite, and asked whether this night was difficult to reconcile with, Neesham could now joke: “Well, I’m not 6’6″ and bowling 145, so it’s probably more impressive when I get out of it.”
Now, Neesham can be philosophical about it. “You worked for six and a half hours during the day, and it comes down to potentially two deliveries,” Neesham said. “And four years ago, we worked for two months, and it came down to one delivery. It’s just the nature of the game.
“I can think of one reason that I don’t focus on the result as much anymore, but look, I think that’s one of the things you learn as you get a little bit older. Obviously I’m probably closer towards the back-end of my career than I am to the front. So yeah, it doesn’t pay to stress too much on the results. I think everyone wants to win and everyone’s desperate to win, especially in world tournaments, but that can’t dictate how you want to play the game.
“It’s just about trying to stick to your process and stick to what you’re good at, which for me is standing still and looking to hit straight. On another day, one ball is different, the result’s different, but we’ll move on to Pune in a couple of days’ time and hopefully get a different result there.”
Parts of this match were so unlike New Zealand: Matt Henry bowling successive no-balls, Neesham bowling that over, catches going down, but then again the way they came back was typical New Zealand. In hanging in there and giving themselves a chance, in refusing to go away, they have at least made sure their net run rate hasn’t plummeted. This could eventually be the difference between facing India and not facing India in a home semi-final. That’s the best they can do really: keep sticking to their processes, keep hanging in there, and hope some day that the cricketing gods smile on them.
Sidharth Monga is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo
