Editorial: Salute captain Kane and his men

FOR a small nation, New Zealand has always punched well above its weight.

It has delivered spectacularly well in agricultural production when marked alongside much larger nations, and its citizens have made impressive contributions in science, the arts and other fields of human endeavour.

But this summer it has been the turn of the Black Caps to shoulder the hopes of a nation in cricket's form of slapdash - the T20 World Cup staged in India.

This band of brothers had to traipse all over the sub-continent to play at all manner of venues yet still played an exciting brand of cricket against the heavyweights of the game.

So Kane Williamson and his mates stumbled at the semifinal hurdle, beaten by England.

For the English it will be some redemption for the ignominious defeat the Black Caps dealt them in the Cricket World Cup 50-over tournament in Wellington in February 2015.

But take nothing away from the way this Kiwi team has performed.

It experimented with bowling attacks with outstanding success, and the batsmen did the business admirably - until this semifinal.

Much kudos deserves to go to captain Williamson - calmness personified, his assessments of each game, both on and off the pitch, have been to the point and telling.

After the semifinal loss he talked of the fickle nature of T20 cricket and pointed out that every cricket game needs to be looked at as an isolated event.

In glorious understatement, he said: "When you turn up to the ground, you want to play your best cricket, but if the other team plays better then you tend to come second. We didn't win. We didn't play the better cricket."

Williamson may be small in stature but he is already head and shoulders above other international captains.

Of course he smarts at a loss, but he keeps things in perspective. He and his team-mates will learn from this loss because that's what great players and great teams do.