“There’s No Doubt That…”: New Zealand Coach’s Blunt Take On ‘Unfair Advantage’ Row

New Zealand coach Gary Stead conceded that Varun Chakravarthy will be a “big threat” in the Champions Trophy final, and the Kiwis will put on their “thinking caps” to work on the ways to negate India’s mystery spinner. India will face New Zealand in the final of the ICC showpiece here on Sunday. “We certainly expect him to play after getting 5/42 against us in the last game. He’s a class bowler, and showed his skills against us last time and he’s a big threat in the game,” Stead told reporters on Friday. “So we’ll be putting our thinking caps on around how we nullify that and how we can still score runs against him,” he added.

In that context, Stead said the Kiwis will look to take some cues from the last Group A match they played here against India a few days back.

In fact, he refused to read too much into India’s familiarity with the conditions.

“The decision around that’s (the schedule) out of our hands, so it’s not something we worry about too much. India have got to play all their games here in Dubai, but we have had a game here and we’ll learn very quickly from that experience.

“So when you come to this stage of the tournament, I mean, we’ve had eight teams at the start, we’re down to two now. It’s always exciting to be in this situation and from our perspective, it just comes to a one-off game now and if we’re good enough to beat India on Sunday, then I will be happy,” he explained.

New Zealand, however, had to shuttle between Pakistan and Dubai for their final group stage match, the semifinal against South Africa, and eventually for the final here.

Stead admitted it was a bit hectic but said his side was good enough to adjust to such schedules.

“There’s no doubt that coming here off playing Lahore and we had a full day of travel yesterday, then it just takes it out of you a little bit, but we’ve got a couple of days now of a little bit of recovery and planning and training towards the game.” Towards the business end, Stead believes that it is more about co-ordination of mind and body rather than excessive training.

“I guess we’re deep into the tournament now and sometimes it’s not always a lot of training that you need, it’s just getting your body and your mind right to compete in the final and that will be our key focus over the next two days,” he added.

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