Skipper pleased with progress

BLACKCAPS captain Stephen Fleming expressed his relief to have qualified for the ICC World Cup Super Eight Series with a game to spare.

The 148-run win over Kenya in St Lucia ensured a Kiwi presence in the last eight of the competition, with the Group C leaders still to play Canada.

Fleming said: “It was a good performance. These games can be tricky. We’ve seen that in this tournament and other tournaments. We just want to be very thorough with what we are doing and OK, we had a tough start but we came out of it well.

“Against Canada we will look to rest a couple of players and get another couple of guys into the tournament. It’s a good opportunity for some of them.”

“It’s a relief to be in this position. It’s nervous in the first week of a tournament and to get through unscathed is nice and now we look forward to the game against Canada and then Antigua where tougher games await.”

Ross Taylor earned man-of-the-match honours for his knock of 85 as the BLACKCAPS posted 331 for seven, a Beausejour Stadium ground record and the team’s highest World Cup innings.

Taylor confirmed he would sit out the match against Canada after the mid-innings muscle strain that caused him to request a runner.

He said: “It was good to last one ball after a first ball duck against England. There were testing conditions at the start and I was just happy to contribute to a win today

“I am out of contention now for the game against Canada but we’ll see how I pull up and hopefully I’ll be right in time for the Super Eight stage.”

Kenya captain Steve Tikolo added: “I thought today our performance was a bit disappointing. We know we can put up a better performance than we did today. I thought we missed a few chances in the field, a couple of run outs and catches and that set us back.

“We are confident ahead of the game against England. We know we need to raise our game against them and perform better than we did today.”

The BLACKCAPS play Canada at the same venue on Friday (NZ time), while Kenya and England meet to contest the final qualifying place 48 hours later.