Black Cap’s record score ‘has not really sunk in yet’
WELLINGTON // Maybe Martin Guptill was just trying to keep a lid on expectations, with big tests still to come in this World Cup for New Zealand.
Or perhaps he just did not have the words to describe his record-breaking feats against the West Indies.
The New Zealand opener set a string of new World Cup bests as he struck an extraordinary 237 not out to set up a 143-run quarter-final win.
Yet his own summary of the day rarely veered much past “pretty cool” and “pretty stoked”.
“It was pretty cool, I’ve never had anything like that before,” Guptill said of having 30,000 people at The Cake Tin singing his name.
“For it to be in New Zealand is even better, and for it to be a quarter-final.”
Guptill said his achievement of hitting the highest World Cup score “hasn’t really sunk in yet.”
He did have the wherewithal to send his batting coach a message midway through the carnage, though.
When he hit a 110-metre six onto the stadium roof, he held two fingers aloft and waved them in the direction of Craig McMillan.
McMillan also hit one onto the roof at this ground during his playing days for New Zealand, and now Guptill has done it twice. “So I’ve gone ahead of him,” he said.
The 28-year-old batsman acknowledged that this performance far exceeded anything he expected to achieve in his career.
“I didn’t think I’d ever play for New Zealand back then,” said Guptill, who lost three toes in a forklift truck accident when he was a teenager.
“I have been lucky enough to represent my country and loving it at the moment.”
New Zealand’s resounding win received more gloss when Dan Vettori, the veteran spinner, held an athletic one-handed catch on the boundary to dismiss Marlon Samuels.
“I couldn’t believe it, for him to leap up a couple of metres and stick up a paw,” Trent Boult, who took four wickets, said of the dismissal.
“I also enjoyed the celebration afterwards, just a little strut. It was something very cool.”
