South Africa legend brutally attacks New Zealand after losing 4 wickets to England in T20 World Cup 2026 match

Former South Africa captain Graeme Smith has criticized New Zealand for its strategy at the end of the 2026 T20 World Cup decider against England in Colombo on February 27. Having already qualified for the semi-finals, England were aiming for a modest 160 wins.

Meanwhile, the New Zealanders had to win the match to book their place in the semi-finals and avoid an anxious wait for the outcome of tonight’s Pakistan-Sri Lanka encounter. Mitchell Santner’s side were in control as England reeled at 117/6 in 17 overs, requiring 43 runs from the last three overs.

However, with the duo of Matt Henry and Lockie Ferguson remaining in four overs, the Kiwi made the huge mistake of bowling part-timer Glenn Phillips for the fourth over. The move proved costly as the English batsmen took 22 runs to take control of the contest.

Both the batsmen in question, Will Jacks and Rehan Ahmed, were right-handers, which makes the move to bowl the off-spinner all the more surprising.

It seems that Graeme Smith felt the same and conveyed his thoughts through his X handle, saying:

“Spin stop for two right-handers (18th over).”

New Zealand were unable to recover from the blunder the rest of the way as England completed a memorable chase in the final over with three balls.

“We’re down to only 160 species” – Mitchell Santner

Mitchell Santner pointed to New Zealand’s inability to turn an excellent stand into a bigger result as the main reason behind their heartbreaking defeat to England. The New Zealanders were leading at 123/3 in 14 overs but scored just one ball in the last six overs, while losing four wickets.

When asked about the match’s progress, Santner said in his post-match presentation (via Cricbuzz):

“I think we set up a good platform to target the last few overs and then we lost a little bit there. We kind of got to 160. We could have easily gotten to 170. But, you know, tonight we kind of set up a platform, and we came into the second timeout in a pretty good place. And then, you know, we probably made some tough choices right out of the time limit. But again, you know, you kind of need to run, and we were thinking at that point, 170, 175 was going to be Really good result.”

New Zealand finished their Super Eight matches with a win, a loss and no result in their three matches, leaving them in a precarious position to qualify for the semi-finals.