World Cup Magnificent Mitchell garners Kohli’s praise, has India worried before cramps, falling wickets get the better of New Zealand | Cricket-world-cup News

The best tribute to Daryl Mitchell came from Virat Kohli’s cry to his teammates. It was the 36th over, and Mitchell had gone down again due to cramps, and was getting some treatment. A ball later, Kohli started to shout at the Indian players to throw at Mitchell’s end. The equation for the Kiwis at that stage was 174 runs from 95 balls.
New Zealand had just had a double jolt, losing captain Kane Williamson and Tom Latham to Mohammed Shami. Yet, rightly, Kohli and the Indians, on the field and in the stands, were worried about Mitchell.
To have the World Cup’s mightiest bowling attack fretting, and their captain constantly shuffling his fielders, trying to get his best men in the areas Mitchell was targeting, was a sight to behold. Rohit Sharma’s GPS would have clocked a few extra kilometres just the frequent running to his bowlers, devising a plan. Nothing was working.

There is a whiff of what-could-have-been about Mitchell’s great knock in the World Cup semifinal. What if he hadn’t suffered severe cramps that necessitated repeated attention from the physio? Could he have achieved the seemingly impossible?
For a while, he wasn’t able to stand, let alone swing his bat as he was doing until then. He also had to soak in the fall of wickets at the other end and repair the innings with Glenn Phillips, who took his time to find his touch. He had to regain his own touch too.
“I will do anything for my team to win,” Mitchell once said, and he walked the talk for the umpteenth time in his career. A son of a celebrated rug coach, he has lived in a few countries, including Australia where he ran into the coaching of Justin Langer. He then turned out for Northern Dricts, where he began to flower in the company of senior teammates.
“A combination of that advice and my own stubbornness allowed me to develop my own way to get where I wanted to be,” he once told 1news.co.nz. That stubbornness was on show on a Mumbai night. Only he stood between India and a spot in the final. The stubborness is perhaps in his genes.
Once, in 2003, the father and son were at a cricket game, watching Stephen Fleming hit his sixth Test ton, when the PA announcer screamed on the loudspeaker that Graham Henry had been appointed the All Blacks coach, replacing the senior Mitchell. His son turned to look at his father who said, “Let’s get out of here”.

He has been mostly out of New Zealand from that day on, coaching in other countries.
In 2019, Mitchell made it to the New Zealand T20 side. “As recently as four years ago, we were thinking that maybe this just wasn’t going to happen, but even in those periods of doubt — and there have been plenty of those — I still believed, even if the light of that belief had dimmed, that if I put my mind to it, I would get there.”
For a while on Wednesday, he rattled India with his simple, smart, effective technique. Mitchell drives gloriously straight and when he predetermines a big hit, he jumps a touch towards off-stump, holds his balance and smashes it. He hit nearly every Indian bowler until cramps and wickets held him back. He started again, but lost Phillips and then, the game had gone too far away from him and New Zealand.Most Read
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Undoubtedly, he would retire to his hotel room for an intense postmortem. He is the sort who files catches he drops as ‘what if?’ Moments. The batting analysis gets more thorough.
“I do that every time I finish a game. Did I watch the ball? Was I absolutely ready for a moment that came my way? Did I prepare the best way possible?” he told 1news. “If I can work through that process, and if I can say I did everything I needed to do, I can accept that it wasn’t my day, and move on.”

He can tick all those boxes in his performance analysis. He was ready for any moment that came his way. He obviously prepared well. And he did everything he needed to do. And it was nearly his day too. At the end of it all, as Kohli hugged him, and patted his head in acknowledgement of his stupendous knock that had India worried, his lips curled into a smile.