New Zealand lifted the men’s T20 tri-series trophy in Harare after edging South Africa by three runs in a finish that felt tighter than the packed crowd. Seven runs were required from the final over, with six wickets still in hand and Dewald Brevis seeing it like a pumpkin. The numbers were stark: the win predictor gave South Africa a 93.3 per-cent chance. Matt Henry looked unflustered.
“The thought process was making sure that there were tough options [for the batters]. If you go to yorkers too early and you run two, it’s hard to kind of keep six [balls] out,” Henry said after the match. “So, we just tried to be positive and to take an element of risk of the death that doesn’t always come off but that was good.”
Key moment
Henry’s decision not to chase six perfect yorkers was crucial. Instead, he mixed short balls, slower deliveries and the odd wide line. Brevis, 31 from 14 at the time, pulled the second ball high towards deep mid-wicket. Michael Bracewell steadied, juggled, then clasped the chance a centimetre inside the rope. Two balls later Corbin Bosch sliced Henry into the twilight, only for Daryl Mitchell to sprint from long-off and pull off a leaping grab. In between, Bracewell spilled a tough running chance, but the miss cost only a single.
“I was hoping he was going to catch it,” Henry said of Bracewell. “It was a really good catch. When you’ve got Bracewell out there on the boundaries, [he is] one of the better fielders going around. So [I had] a lot of confidence, just hoped that one did his job. These guys, they take more catches than they drop, so I wasn’t as worried [about the dropped catch]. I was more just focused on what I could do. [It was a] tough chance, and not many people probably get to that to create a chance. He’s an unbelievable fielder.”
Series-long impact
Henry finished as leading wicket-taker with ten, including six in overs 17-20 at an economy of 6.69. Those numbers matter because New Zealand went through the tournament unbeaten; every game remained live until the closing overs. The seamer’s clarity showed again when reflecting on the craft of closing contests.
“The key thing is wanting those overs,” Henry, Player of the Match and Player of the Series, said. “It’s never easy, they don’t always go your way either. It’s something we all train at, and I think when you’re talking about death, it’s not just the final over. It’s actually the building up of that.”
Tactics and context
Death-overs bowling is often boiled down to ‘hit your yorkers’. Henry’s approach was looser, even a touch counter-intuitive. By refusing to chase six inch-perfect balls he removed the free run-two option and forced batters into riskier strokes. The short ball, still perceived as a boundary threat, doubles as a wicket-taking ploy if placed shoulder-high on a sluggish Harare surface.
Co-coach Luke Ronchi, never shy of plain talk, approved afterwards: “You don’t want guys hiding. Matt not only wanted that last over, he understood exactly how he was going to win it.”
What next?
The three-team event offered New Zealand valuable match practice before their tour of the Caribbean. South Africa fly home licking wounds but with some positives, notably Brevis’s clean hitting and Bosch’s composure with the ball earlier in the evening. Zimbabwe hosted tidily, though they will rue letting two tight finishes slip during the group stage.
From here, Henry will rest briefly before another white-ball block; his recent red-ball workload was limited, yet his white-ball confidence is obvious. Whether the blueprint—avoid the full six-ball yorker plan—catches on elsewhere remains to be seen. In Harare, on a brisk Sunday evening, it was enough.
“With not too many to defend, I probably made it a little bit clearer in terms of, having probably taken a few more risks, and making sure that it either was a dot ball or a wicket. Just making sure I was nice and clear at the top of the mark and executing what I wanted to do, and thankfully executed the plans nicely and catches stuck, so that was good.”
