Perhaps it was the knowledge that both sides were in the same boat of never having won a World Cup before that had a relaxing effect on New Zealand skipper Kane Williamson and England captain Eoin Morgan during their pre-final press conferences at Lord’s yesterday. Coming from a country of less than five million people, Williamson has had to answer the underdog question regularly. His diplomacy seemed to have run out midway through his answer yesterday.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. “I think England rightly so deserve to be favourites. Coming into this tournament from the start, they were favourites and they’ve been playing really good cricket,” Williamson said. “But whatever dog we are, it’s just important that we focus on the cricket that we want to play and we have seen over the years that anybody can beat anybody regardless of breed of dog (smiling).”
He delved further into the canine metaphor, with maybe a sniff of slapstick humour, when asked how it would feel to be party-poopers by defeating the hosts.
“Party-poopers? You talking about dogs again, hey?” laughed Williamson, before adding a hint. “Underdogs?”
Morgan’s humour came through when asked what he thought was Williamson’s weakness as they set about trying to stop the man who has 548 runs in the tournament.
“His backing up, I think,” Morgan replied.
In other words, the England skipper would rather that his counterpart stayed at the non-striker’s end.
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