CHENNAI: Mitchell Santner and Co will be keen to seal the second Super 8 spot, when they face lowly Canada in a Group D fixture of the T20 World Cup at the MA Chidambaram Stadium morning on Tuesday.
South Africa, the other team in the Group D, have already qualified for the next phase, having won three games.
This will be New Zealand's first meeting against Canada. Pace spearhead Lockie Ferguson has returned home for the birth of his child and is expected to rejoin the squad for the Super 8s. In Ferguson's absence, Kyle Jamieson could get the nod in the playing XI.
As for Canada, they had their moments against South Africa and UAE but they have failed to convert them to wins. On Friday in Delhi, they had UAE on the mat at 66 for 4 by the 13th over in a chase of 151, but they allowed Aryansh Sharma and Sohaib Khan to do the rescue act and canter home. Canada can't afford such mistakes against New Zealand and must play to their potential if they are keen to open their account.
New Zealand were left exposed in all departments in their seven-wicket loss to South Africa in Ahmedabad.
However, Kiwi all-rounder Glenn Phillips played down the defeat and insisted that there was nothing alarming or worrying.
"If we didn't bowl as well as we did on previous days, we look at that and (try) to do better the next day. It's professional cricket at the end of the day. Sometimes you're good, and sometimes you're not. You just hope the gap between the two is a little less each day," Phillips said in the pre-match press conference on Monday.
On paper, New Zealand look likely to beat Canada. In the next round they will be facing stronger teams and they have to on their toes in order to reach the semi-finals. The game against Canada could be an opportunity for them to iron out a few kinks.
"I mean I don't think it's about necessarily improving on any given thing per se, it's about adapting as much as possible to the conditions, obviously they are going to be very different to the ones that we've got here, so it poses a completely different challenge, and I guess there's no one thing in cricket that's a magic nugget to be able to give performances, so it's just about trying to be a little bit better, and doing our things that we do best for longer periods of time, especially if the conditions dictate that we're going to have to take a game a little bit longer, maybe scores of 160, 150 might be different in Sri Lanka with a bit more turn. So it's just adapting to those conditions, regardless of who we're playing at any given time," said Phillips.
Meanwhile, Canada's wicketkeeper Shreyas Movva conceded that his squad had a tough time recovering from the loss to the UAE in its previous match. Canada let UAE off the hook after having them in a spot of bother at 66 for four in the 13th overs.
"It was not easy to get over that defeat. We need to regroup as a team. We had two practice matches in Chennai, where we batted really well. It's just that in bowling we need to come up with good plans," said Movva.
