Some Professionalism Please

Hello and welcome back to my blog

The Ashes is over and now we have a month of ODI cricket to enjoy (or endure depending on your opinion). When sitting through these 50 over innings, the mind does tend to wander – for students like me the overs between 20-40 are a good opportunity to finish work, attend to Facebook or play a computer game. It is from the last past-time that I begin this week’s entry

When a person becomes enthralled by cricket at a young age or during adolescence, it is natural to not only play the game outdoors (or indoors if parents are not looking) but to enjoy a good cricket computer game. Personally, whether it is EA CRICKET 2004 or INTERNATIONAL CRICKET CAPTAIN 2005, trying to simulate a game on wet, dry or subcontinent pitches always poses a problem. I am forever frustrated that the AI seems to manufacture wickets regardless of who the batsman is in an attempt to mirror real life. To overcome this requires a simple change in tactic.

My point this week is if a child can learn to tailor their game to different conditions (i.e. not play the slog, pull or hook) then why can’t professional, international batsmen? Sadly I am picking on the Black Caps primarily but the recent Sri Lanka Tour was more frustrating for lack of professionalism over the actual results – which were not that surprising anyway

Here are some questions:

• Why did Martin Guptill continue playing the hook shot when it was clear to my blind grandmother that he was having trouble with it? Not to mention the deep fine-leg and square-leg fielders were set for it!
• Why does Ross Taylor continue to be dismissed in the EXACT same way to spin bowlers? I’m not talking about the slog sweep – he seems to be improving in this department – but the little on-drive/defensive prod that plays slightly across the line and time after time results in an edge to first-slip. This dismissal has occurred when the likes of Panesar and Murali (doosra from round the wicket) bowl to him and can get him out on 1 or 100.
• Why can’t either Jesse Ryder or Brendon McCullum take a moment to judge the qualities of a given pitch? In the sub-continent the pitches are slow and dry for the most part and do not tolerate aggressive intent

When we have tours to the subcontinent in the future I will watch with interest to see if these lessons have been learnt. At the moment the batsmen are in need of a professional out look. It is their JOB to score runs and occupy the crease and I don’t mean ‘job’ as a synonym for ‘role’ in the side, I mean they get paid to get runs thus they should be working hard to improve. Captain Vettori gave them a harsh speech about the need to improve after the 2020 World Cup exit, also stressing that the batsmen need a DESIRE to improve

On the team front there was one observation that I made during the India vs. Sri Lanka game last night – the list of highest chases at the ground were:

• Dominated by subcontinent sides
• All victories by 2, 3 or 4 wickets

This will be a problem for New Zealand as we often rely on the whole line up to chase good totals but this doesn’t work in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh because ‘getting in’ is more difficult and top-order partnerships are the key.

This places more pressure on the batsmen but I understand that for many of them, the tour was a learning experience. For now I must be content with batting intelligently against AI opposition and hope that some day soon the Black Caps will do the same

Well that’s it from here and I hope to see you again
It’s good bye for now