Fleming steps down as OD captain

Stephen Fleming has stepped down as New Zealand’s one-day captain following their semi-final loss to Sri Lanka in the World Cup.

Fleming has said he wishes to continue playing under a new skipper which is expected to be current vice-captain Daniel Vettori.

Fleming admitted that they had simply been “outclassed” in the semi-final against Sri Lanka saying “It was a true reflection of where the teams are. The margin of victory was probably about right. They’ve got some big-game players who fronted up and a lot of artillery in their bowling attack.”

“The new ball attack of Lasith Malinga and Chaminda Vaas is outstanding and they’ve still got Muttiah Muralitharan to come. We tried to be positive against Murali, but he’s class, and sometimes that can result in slumps.”

“We hoped we could restrict them to a score of around 250 but we didn’t bowl and field well enough to do that and Mahela Jayawardene (who scored 115 not out) played a superb innings.”

“And the area we thought we’d be good at, the last 10 overs, we were very poor.”

“The two sides we identified as being more skilled than us were Australia and Sri Lanka, so coming third or fourth was probably a fair result.”

“Losing the toss might have been a little bit important – we would have liked to go on [first] and get a score but I still don’t think it would have changed the outcome.”

Fleming said he was keen to continue captaining the Test side saying “I still want to captain the Test side. I’ve only just turned 34 and I think I’ve still got some good batting years ahead of me.

“I want to concentrate on that for a while but I want to put a lot of energy into our Test cricket. I want to play that with a fresh mind and finish off my career with some stats that I think I’m worth.”

Fleming appears to rate current vice-captain Daniel Vettori as the leading candidate to take over saying “The way we’ve groomed Daniel Vettori for this tournament, he will certainly come into discussion, but there’s going to be a lot of change within New Zealand cricket.”

“I’m not sure what Bracewell is doing, the selectors are doing, so it’s probably a bit presumptuous to recommend Daniel but he’s done a fine job up to this point.”

Fleming averages 32.40 with the bat from 280 one-day internationals with eight hundreds and a highest score of 134*.