With their defeat to Pakistan in the semifinals of the Men's T20 World Cup in Sydney, New Zealand once again finished as a bridesmaid in another white-ball World Cup, and skipper Kane Williamson said missing the final was disappointing.
It is becoming a bit worrisome for the fans as New Zealand showed remarkable consistency in reaching their fourth semifinal in recent times but failed to make it to the all-important finale for the second year in running.
The Black Caps boasted the best net run rate of any side at the tournament, lost only once in the Super 12 stage =- against fellow semifinalist England. However, they were troubled early by Shaheen Shah Afridi and could only put up 152/4 on the board which Pakistan chased easily with skipper Babar Azam and Mohammad Rizwan giving them a good start.
New Zealand once again failed to win a major trophy and the next opportunity for them will be in the ODI World Cup in India next year.
"Yeah, to me it's about the game, the performance, and that's certainly what we look at. That's the frustrating thing for me. If you get beaten playing your best cricket, then you certainly have to accept that," said Williamson after the match against New Zealand.
"Today was a little bit disappointing. There were some good bits, but we thought we had a defendable total if we were to be on our game, and the margins are small in this format, and Pakistan was outstanding with the bat and certainly chased that down," he added.
He said the frustrating part of all this for him was that they could not put up their best performance against Pakistan on Wednesday.
"To be honest, being in a leadership role with the team, you're always looking at the performance. I think we've played in a number of different finals and put out really good performances, probably good enough to win, and either got met by a side that's played a little bit better or a side that's played about equal, you know, however, it looks.
"You accept some of those things, and so the frustrating part of this today is that we weren't quite on top of our game. We fought hard and we showed some good characteristics that are important for our team and the attitude you want to see, but yeah, it wasn't to be. That's the frustrating part to me," Williamson said.
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"The picture is big. You play a number of tournaments. Yeah, you want to win some, but you finish a tournament, you certainly just start focusing on the next one. To me, it comes down to the cricket, and that's where we put our focus. The environment, how well we're tracking, and there's been a lot of good stuff. The journey was good, a lot of good cricket, but as we know, you've got to continue to as you go into the business end, and today was certainly frustrating," he added.