FROM THE MAG: Neesham is one of the funniest and most outspoken international cricketers. The Kiwi allrounder talks in our September magazine about being a T20 finisher, the upcoming World Cup, and why he'll never get over the 2019 World Cup final
This is an abridged version of James Coyne's interview with Jimmy Neesham that features in our September 2022 magazine. To read the full version, grab a copy of the magazine by clicking here.
You're no longer in New Zealand's Test set-up, but surely you found time to watch this summer's Test series?
Yeah, I watched parts. Obviously the second at Trent Bridge was a really, really good Test match, the sort of game that will bring fans back to Test cricket. I'd have liked to see New Zealand come out on the right side of it, but you have to put your hands up and say well played to the England guys. Anytime you have a game like that and look back at parts of the game you could have done differently. But the nature of the game is that you have to look forward to the next challenge.
You tend to bat down at No.6 for New Zealand and in franchise cricket, but obviously Northants used you as their floating dangerman...
Yeah, absolutely. It's the nature of being an allrounder or a finisher. Your role changes a lot depending on how the innings is set up. My ideal entry point in a T20 innings is about the 11th or 12th over. I think it's a necessity based on the team. The lower down you get in a T20 batting order, the harder it is to bat. But when you've got someone as accomplished as Chris Lynn or Josh Cobb at the top it allowed me to focus on a finisher role and generating a strike-rate down the bottom, which is one of the more difficult parts of T20 cricket.
Do you want to get up the order at some stage? The nature of batting lower down is that you tend not to rack up big scores. People will be surprised that your highest T20I score is 48 not out.
In the past potentially I wanted to get up the top of the order and be at the top of the run-scoring charts, because it forwards you individually. But as I've got older I've got more comfortable focusing on that role at the bottom. You might only score 200 runs in a league season, compared to someone at the top scoring 500, but those 200 might be the winning and losing of games based on 20s and 25s. My focus is much more getting the job done in the wins column.
Was the semi-fiinal win over England in the last T20 World Cup – when New Zealand chased 57 in the last four overs, with six balls to spare – the most extreme example?
Yeah, it's the perfect example. You come in at the back end of a game and have the perfect chance to change the result of that game. You might get 20-something [27 off 11 balls in this case] and it doesn't appear that great on the career stats, but you're through to a final. So you focus on those results and trust the culture in the group will back you up when your stats don't look that great, but you're doing a role for the team that's quite important. That's one thing New Zealand cricket has focused on well in the past, and I try to bring it to each team I play for round the world.
The upcoming T20 World Cup in Australia will be a different challenge.
The first thing that jumps out is that spin will have less of a role. Bigger grounds, truer wickets – spin will struggle to have as much of an influence. The type of death bowling you plan for changes a lot on bigger grounds – different strategies like slower balls into the wicket and length deliveries become more viable, whereas on slower wickets in the UAE you really had no choice but to hit your yorker and just try to keep the ball in the park. There's lots of differences, but we have close to 25 white-ball games before we even kick off. The best strategy is to have a settled unit going into a tournament like that, and then edit your strategies as you go on.
"It was pretty much the worst thing that can happen to someone in a cricket career" [Clive Mason/Getty Images]
Has the 2019 World Cup final helped teach you perspective?
The World Cup finishing the way it did, it was pretty much the worst thing that can happen to someone in a cricket career. To survive that and keep moving forward gives you the confidence to know you can pretty much survive anything. I just turn up to tournaments like the Blast, have a smile on my face, try to hit some sixes, and contribute to the team winning matches. And if that doesn't happen then I'm more than happy to move on to the next thing. I'm 31 years old now – as an allrounder you never know when your last season’s coming up. So I try to treat each tournament as a gift, and what happens happens.
Even so, do you still lie in bed at night thinking about that day in 2019?
In that respect it probably didn't help having Jos Buttler in the room next to me for two months in India! But yeah, that's the sort of thing… I'll never be over that. I don't think anyone gets over something like that. It's just a case of owning it and accepting it as part of my career. I'll probably be at speaking functions or in bars getting asked about it for the rest of my life, and that’s just the way it is. It would have been ideal for it to finish the other way around. But it has opened up a few doors for me in different aspects as well. So you take the good with the bad.
Inside the September issue of The Cricketer magazine, you'll also find:
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