Champions Trophy: Miller backs NZ to win, admits travel ahead of semi-final wasn’t ideal

Lahore, March 6 (IANS) South Africa’s veteran batter David Miller said he would back New Zealand to win 2025 Champions Trophy, while admitting that it wasn’t ideal for the Proteas to travel between Lahore and Dubai before their semifinal game happened.

South Africa made a trip to Dubai on Sunday shortly after beating England in Karachi and came back to Pakistan on Monday after their semi-final clash was confirmed to be held in the Gaddafi Stadium against New Zealand, which they lost by 50 runs on Wednesday, despite Miller hitting an unbeaten century off 67 balls.

“It’s only an hour-and-40-minute flight, but the fact that we had to do that (was not ideal). It’s early morning, it’s after a game, and we had to fly. Then we got to Dubai at 4 pm, and at 7.30 in the morning we had to come back.

“It doesn’t make it nice. It’s not like we flew five hours, and we had enough time to recover and recuperate. But it was not an ideal situation still to be honest. I’ll be honest with you. I think I’ll be supporting New Zealand,” said Miller at the end of the game, which ended South Africa’s time in the eight-team tournament.

Miller also admitted that he would have wanted for South Africa to reach the final and face India in what would have been a re-match of last year’s T20 World Cup final, the Proteas lost narrowly in Barbados.

“There were really good contributions, a couple of fifties up front. We had a really good foundation. Unfortunately, in the middle, we lost a couple of wickets too many. At the end of the day, it’s a team effort.

“Everyone’s trying out there to do their best. It would have been nice to have a rematch against India. But life is not fair sometimes. Anyone has to work really hard to achieve trophies,” he concluded.

–IANS

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