2: Ronchi vs England
Here's a telling statistic: In five ODIs opening against England, in England, Luke Ronchi has mustered 0, 2, 22, 2 and a first ball duck today. That's 26 runs off 42 balls. A few days ago, he hit a bracing 65 off 43 balls to propel New Zealand to a formidable 291 against Australia. For all that, you had a dark sense of foreboding going into the England game.
The form line wasn't encouraging, but the counter argument is that Ronchi had been in decent nick. True, he got a decent ball first up. That can happen. Even so, at 36, his time has probably come. Now his card needs to be marked: NTOAEA - Never To Open Against England Again.
After this tournament, New Zealand have nothing until the next home summer. By then, it will likely be time to move on to a younger man. Ronchi's Wellington team mate Tom Blundell perhaps; maybe Auckland's vigorous young top order hitter Glenn Phillips.
3: Broom sweeper
Neil Broom's time should be up after this tournament too. He's averaging 28.9 with 899 runs in 36 ODIs. But wait, let's remove his runs against Bangladesh and Ireland and now it's 354 runs at 15.3. He's 33 and has simply dipped out too often when runs were needed.
Soft runs against the lightweight attacks are one thing. New Zealand needed Broom to push on after Williamson's dismissal today, steer the up and down middle order towards the target. Instead he got 11 off 21 balls before going lbw to legspinner Adil Rashid trying to sweep.
He was tried, discarded, then brought back by current selectors Mike Hesson and Gavin Larsen last summer. It was a left-field call and nothing wrong with that. But it hasn't worked often enough when it needed to. There will be enough chances next summer before England arrive for the marquee event of the international season to try other candidates.
Oops, hang on. New Zealand play Bangladesh next, and must win to have a chance of staying in the trophy. Broom v Bangladesh in the last five meetings: 22, 109 not out, 97, 48 and 53. Leave him there. For now.
4: Double Trouble
Jimmy Neesham sure hits a clean ball. He did so today lifting lively Liam Plunkett into the crowd at mid wicket. That gave him 10 runs off the first five balls of the 37th over. A good haul from the over and a chance to press on with Williamson and Taylor gone. So what does the lefthand allrounder do? Try a repeat next ball and gave a sitter to deep square leg. It was brainless.
Yes, he may have felt the adrenalin rushing and New Zealand did need to keep some momentum up. But, really. Shortly after, Santner, running down the pitch at legspinner Rashid, got hopelessly tamped off a wide full toss down the leg side, which was called a wide.
About time both made decent batting contributions. Neesham looked the part against Australia last summer but is overdue against decent opposition; Santner last significant contribution, an unbeaten 38 against Australia in Hamilton, was nine innings ago.
5: Fair dues England
They were rubbish at the World Cup two years ago but they've gone away, licked their wounds, changed personnel, and reasserted themselves. England are now in strong ODI form, have won 10 of their last 11 matches and are first team into the trophy semifinals, and well deserved too.
This should have been a tight contest, instead England passed 300 for the 23rd time since the World Cup and then turned the screw with the ball. Their key players are standing tall.
