IMC Over 70’s World Cup

Tournament Report.

Canterbury NZ

Feb 18 - 5th of March 2026.

A World Cup at home was a great opportunity for NZ to win the whole tournament. After finishing 4th at the first over 70’s World Cup in 2024 in England we were confident we had improved and had the team to do the job. And while we were better, we could see from how many of the matches played out, that so were most of the other teams too. Overall though we got closer to making the final and made some encouraging improvements to our game. 

The last tournament saw Australia defeat England in the round robin then lose the final to them. And so it played out the same way again this time too. England champions again and Australia runners up, again. In the final Australia uncharacteristically bowled short and wide, missed a few run outs, and dropped 4 or 5 catches allowing England to amass 288/3 at a rate of 6.4 an over.  Not one of Australia’s bowlers went for less than 5/over.

Australia gave it a good nudge but fell 16 runs short reaching 273/5 in the end. The middle overs saw Australia meander along with little pressure put on the field and what looked like possible 2’s turned into slow motion 1’s. It looked from the outside they had almost given up the chase. When they lost their 5th wicket in the 31st over the required run rate was up to 10. When  it got to the last 10 overs they needed 117 runs, their current run rate was under 5, but finally they clicked into action. 

An exciting last 10 overs saw them score 101 runs but it wasn’t enough to get them over the line falling in the end 16 runs short.

 The final was played between the 2 best teams in the competition and it’s probably no coincidence that both countries have extensive and very competitive domestic competitions in that age group. By contrast the NZ team and the rest of the teams play a lot less cricket and little of it at that level of competition. 

So how do we get to the next step to make and win a final? Based on what we saw from this tournament it means having to beat both England and Australia and one of them probably twice. That would take even further improvements in all facets of performances. Bowling, fielding, batting, and tactics especially around net run rates. 

There were encouraging signs of improvement though. In our match with Australia we were 55 runs short but batted out our 45 overs and held them to 5.7 runs per over in the field. Against England with the game abandoned there was no chance to test ourselves on a wicket that seemed very helpful to the bowlers.

We had 2 players in the top 5 runs per scorers with Paul Facoory second on 375 and Cliff King fifth on 287 runs. Peter Nixon was first in batting strike rates and Roger Stachursky was third. Facoory was first equal on most 4’s scored but out of the top 10 batters Paul’s % of dot balls was the highest at 59.4%. 

Jeremy Wilson topped the bowling RPO table albeit with only 1 over and that was a maiden bowled to former West Indian test player, Larry Gomes. Definitely an under-utilised resource as he himself noted. John Cushen showed his class capturing 5 wickets from his 22 overs with a great run rate of 2.82. The 41 wickets we took over the whole tournament were shared fairly evenly among the bowlers and run outs with Roger taking 6 being our highest wicket taker.

You could look at fitness as a factor and no doubt the match fitness of the English and Australian teams was a determining factor. It was a war of attrition for most teams and quite remarkable really for us old blokes to play 7 games in 14 days and for the finalists 8 in 16 days. I take my hat off to the efforts of not only the NZ players but the rest of the teams as well.

It was a huge honour and privilege to be a part of the tournament and to wear the black uniform and play cricket with my NZ mates. I would do it all again tomorrow if I could. 

After our last game against Canada Jeremy Wilson and Evan Watkin both retired from representing the NZ over 70’s teams. Both have given great service over many years to NZ teams and to the veterans game itself. Both have continuing commitments out of the playing 11’s to the game and we look forward to catching up with them again. 

Metrics

If we look at some of the metrics and exclude all of the numbers from the final we get some interesting comparisons. 

FIELDING. If we compare the top three teams, England, Australia, and ourselves in run outs, catches, stumping’s, and wicket keeper catches we get:

BOWLING and BATTING. In other comparisons England took 44 wickets plus their 7 run outs and in their batting scored 1220 runs. Australia took 43 wickets plus 3 run outs and scored 1334 runs. NZ took 36 wickets plus 5 run outs and scored 1266 runs. 

NET RUN RATES. The other area to compare the top 3 teams is on NRR. It was, after all, what got England into the final ahead of NZ after we finished equal on the points table. Australia finished on 2.5, England 2.45, and NZ 1.19. So the scoring rate and the manner in which they restricted their opponents was a big factor in who made the final. England restricted their opponents to 819 runs, Australia 883, and NZ 1222.

In Summary the top 2 teams took more catches, dismissed more batters, squeezed their opponents harder, and mostly scored more runs than NZ and all other teams.