They were the champions, my friends

It feels like I was just here yesterday. I’m sitting in Frankfurt Airport waiting for a connecting flight. I wasn’t here yesterday or even been here before but just seven days ago I departed the UK for South Africa, going via Munich Airport, and this airport feels exactly the same.

It’s 6.30am, I got off the plane at 5.45am. I’m a bit tired. I managed to get a bit of sleep on the 9 hr flight from Johannesburg but not enough to make up for the previous night’s lack thereof.

The night before last, we lost the Champions Trophy. We weren’t good enough, sure we were the underdog, but it still would have been great to have made the match closer. Australia deserved to win; they are the deserved winners of the 2009 Champions Trophy.

Dan (Vettori) was ruled out of the match early although not many of us knew anything. His hammy had been bad in the semi-final vs Pakistan and probably shouldn’t have played that one; so the final, after doing a little more damage to it in his Man of the Match performance against Pakistan, was out of the question; although we all knew how much he wanted to play.

I was out in the middle with some of the guys kicking a football around before warm-ups started when the coach came up to Jeetan Patel, hand on shoulder, and said “Mate, you’re playing.” It’s always a great feeling getting that ‘chat’ especially when you’ve worked so hard, consistently, to be ready to play. I knew how Jeets was feeling; overjoyed for himself and hugely disappointed for Dan and the team to lose such a player.

There was a little bit of ‘shell shock’ when we all realised we were going to be missing a stand-out player and our captain; not an uneasy feeling but we knew our chances of winning had just taken a hit. You need to have the best team possible out in the big matches. We’ve had our injuries throughout this tournament like nobody’s business. I was only there because of one, [Aaron] Redmond and [James] Franklin, both playing, were there for the same reason; late call-ups after injuries. We had our best team on the park that we could field. We had lost [Jesse] Ryder, [Jacob] Oram and [Daryll] Tuffy; all guys who would have been playing had they been fit. The good thing within the NZ setup at the moment is that we have some bloody good players waiting to get their turn (again).

The match against Pakistan was brilliant; we knew we had held them to a score we would have been very happy with before the match started. Sure, their tail put on a couple more than we’d like, but we’d take it. And our run chase was superb. Grant Elliott was at his best. The pace of his innings made our chase feel comfortable and when Dan joined him still with over 100 to get, we were still very confident of getting through.

Grant and Dan put on 104, a fifth-wicket partnership record for the Wanderers, to get us to within four of the needed runs. They took their time, because we had it, and took their chances, because they were given. A catch at cover, that should have been taken, really put the final within reach. Their partnership was 40 from 70 balls at one stage, if I remember rightly. A little slow but controlled none the less. They then proceeded to up tempo. The hundred brought up from almost even balls. The Powerplay used perfectly!

I’m now home and have had a short break in Belgium, Bruges to be exact. Great fun, great city; more about that later.

I’ll get this finished and leave some room for another in a couple of days but before I finish I want to have a small dig at the South Africa press. Sitting at the airport in Jo’burg, Franky and I sat reading the paper, the morning after the final. The way the two main stories read on the back page, the main sports page, was that it was unfortunate that the ‘underdog couldn’t come through.’ We both sat there and thought that it was poor media, not for us, we’d have loved to have won, but for the Australians that won the event, the Champions Trophy. They won it, they deserved it. They went through the tournament unbeaten and deserved to win. Unfortunately the tone of these two stories was that it would have been great if NZ had won, against all odds; instead of congratulating Australia for a great tournament. Had we been Australian we would have been very disappointed that our success was not celebrated like it should have been.