68 isn't 45 (and certainly not 26)

Hello and welcome back to my blog

The first test at Lords was one of the more fascinating tests at Lords that I have seen since 2005.  Similar to that Ashes match, I understand the kind of bewildered feeling of disappointment that English fans must have gone through on that occasion but after a few days to ponder on the bizarre result I thought I had better post my thoughts on the game before the second test at Headingly gets underway.  In short I do not believe that the 4th innings capitulation for 68 is cause for great alarm, it is of an entirely different context to the 45 all out vs. South Africa and considering other disasters against English bowling attacks (there have been many down the years) this one leaves me with more optimism than most.

First of all the game itself and in its entirety:
England (chose to bat) first innings:
232-10, 112.2 overs
Bairstow 41, Root 40
Southee 4-58, Wagner 3-70

• Trent Boult's dismissal of Cook and Trott was world class bowling in terms of discipline, planning, skill and delivering the right ball at the right time

New Zealand first innings:
207-10, 69 overs
Taylor 66, Williamson 60
Anderson 5-47, Finn 4-63

• Ross Taylor played very nicely and should have carried on to make a century
• James Anderson's 300th wicket was a special moment (although I doubt it required quite the fanfare it got from the English commentary team)

England second innings:
213-10, 68.3 overs
Root 71, Trott 56
Southee 6-50

• Tim Southee becomes the second NZ player to take 10-for at Lords (after Dion Nash's 11-for)

New Zealand's second innings:
68-10, 22.3 overs
Wagner 17
Broad 7-44 (man of the match)

England win by 170 runs

Now the infuriating thing about that scorecard is the way New Zealand fell over in their FIRST innings.  If there is one problem that persists with this team for years now it is when they do well in the field, keep a top side to 250 or less but then barely manage a lead or even (as was the case here) fail to even reach that mark.  However that is my only real issue with the performance.  The bowling and fielding was some of the best I have EVER seen from New Zealand it was purposeful, patient and above all it was confident even if wickets weren't falling.  We have a world-class seem/swing bowling combination in Southee & Boult and both are not even 25 years old yet!  Wagner and Bracewell provide different skills as first-change bowlers and add a competent spinner for balance and the team will be set for 10 years.  Williamson looks better at no.3 with each match - it will forever be a disappointment to me that he couldn't start at 5 and work his way up under the leadership of more experienced batsmen but he has great potential even without the preferred tutelage.  A small pet-peeve of mine appears to be satiated for the moment and that is the ability to wrap up the tail with Southee and Wagner combining well in both innings of this game against the best lower-order in the world (Swann, Broad, Finn and Anderson (who didn't score his first duck for 54 innings - Martin went that long before scoring his first run!))

The elephant in the room is of course the 4th innings that only lasted 22.3 overs of quite unbelievable collapse.  I watched the entire thing and crazy would be the right way to describe it; whether it was Fulton prodding at one about 10 miles outside his off-stump - something he had avoided doing back home - to Kane Williamson just lifting one to cover which perhaps indicates one area of his no.3 game yet to be fully developed i.e. the counter-attack.  It really was an hour or two of insanity but again I say that I don't really care.  The innings was not anything like the one against South Africa in January where we chose to bat in difficult conditions, fresh from a team upheaval and all against the best attack in the world; that was a rookie mistake and produced only what it could/should have produced.  Against South Africa we saw everything that could have gone wrong for the team culminate in true humiliation but I contend that the 170-run loss at Lords had more to do with fine bowling than anything.
I sat watching as the innings began and the commentary box was going on about how Anderson and Swann would be serious threats and although that was a true, if basic, analysis, I couldn't help thinking that Stuart Broad might well do the damage in conditions that were swinging and on a pitch that was quickening up.  This proved to be sadly accurate as Broad bowled the best spell I have seen from him - easily the equal of his Oval performance against Australia in 2009 - with the ball moving sideways, up, down, in the air, off the pitch; add to that James-300-wickets-Anderson hooping it at the other end and I contend that this was more difficult to face than the bowling in South Africa.  Sometimes you just have to accept that you were undone, yes they could have defended better, perhaps the aura of Lords got to them but at the end of the day England have a fine bowling attack and this will happen in their home conditions.
In the 1950s and 1960s New Zealand were regularly rolled for next to nothing by England but today the context is not that of a colony being rightly smashed by the mother-country but of a team on the up that is slowly rectifying the inadequacies, the failings and the mistakes of the last decade of mediocre to embarrassing cricket.  Context matters and I look at this performance with only mild disappointment because we continue to make the number 2 side look mortal and beatable in every match - not just one innings, one day or one test but across months.  This side won a test in Australia and in Sri Lanka and I have nothing but optimism for what it can achieve in the next 10 years if it remains determined, consistent and confident.  The only thing I fear is that the players don't look back on the Lords test the same way I do...

Well that's it from here and I hope you join me again
It's good bye for now

A lesson in dealing with the media - for the reading public

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The first test at Lords is about to begin and while I have made my opinions fairly clear on this match, there is one thing that happened during the lead up to this series that I haven't really commented on yet.  last week Ross Taylor admitted that he had moved on from the loss of the captaincy last year and just wanted to concentrate on success in England.  This seems in stark contrast to his comments in March, right after the third test at Eden Park where he admitted to 'not feeling comfortable' in the dressing room with the team.  Now there are a few things infuriating about that interview:

1. That he even gave an interview the day after that test match at all
2. That he was foolish enough to say a statement like that which was always going to be exploded over the news and distract from a very impressive series for his team
3. That the media would then use that statement, never mind what he might have actually meant by it (see below), to constantly suggest disquiet in the team and keep the drama rolling for another 6 weeks, and finally
4. That we the public would start believing this nonsense

It's this last point I want to look at right now.

Just to lay it all my cards on the table, I do not believe for one second that Taylor's comment after the third test was meant to be interpreted as anything other than this: due to his absence during the South Africa tour (and the reasons behind that absence) it was a little bit awkward being back in the changing rooms with the team, under the captain and coach that had figured so prominently in said absence and this would naturally take time to heal.  To me this seems a natural reaction to the question of how he had coped being back in the team again, but no no no we had to watch as every paper and news bulletin lead with this as if it were a story - usually insinuating if not blatantly stating, that there was clearly still a divide between captain, batsman and coach.  I believe this was an appalling exaggeration of what Taylor said - whether or not you think he should have said anything or not is a discussion for a different day - and because of the reaction there was no way that either party was going to try and clarify the statement.
Thus you allow the subsequent articles to lead with lines like '...after Taylor's indication that there were still problems within the team'  which is one statement jumping from context to context to context like different dimensions.  Now that he has admitted to moving on from the whole episode we can expect to see the following '...and the Black Caps, a team that played under the pressure of a split dressing room for two months while Taylor was rehabilitated...'

This requires us to ask the following question, do players need to be more careful about what and when they say things?  To which I would say yes probably but only for the sake of not distracting the team.  Not because of what the media might do with what they say.  The onus should be on us not to take every headline we see in the papers and ignore the context, the nuance or the simple plain truth.  Remember that media is a business and sensation sells so they will hype anything to make you read/buy their product.  We need to learn to read and separate the facts from the speculation and misinformation - for instance the second paragraph of this article which seems tame enough until you realise that it basically says that Taylor didn't tour SA because Hesson was a 'key figure' in his ousting.  Hesson WAS the key figure, for a start, and to reduce Taylor's decision to one of player vs. coach misses the point of the whole episode which was as much about New Zealand Cricket as it was about Hesson; the word they want is 'subsequently' not 'consequently'.  We should demand better.

It is true that players/coaches ought to be careful how they respond to media questions - answers should be well thought out as they can be misinterpreted.  At the end of the day however, the media is a filter that information goes into and then appears on the other side, often altered; players/coaches appear to understand this (even though they still make mistakes) but I am concerned that the public remain ignorant.

Good luck to the Black Caps tonight

Well that's it from here and I hope you join me again
It's good bye for now

You better believe we're an Ashes entree

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Just a month after New Zealand's encouraging efforts against England in Dunedin, Wellington and Auckland, they are beginning the return tour of the motherland which will include two May tests.  There  is a Champions Trophy (gods are they still doing that tournament?) and then 10 - that's right 10! - Ashes Test matches in the next 9 months and some forgettable ODI cricket as well no doubt.  New Zealand coach Mike 'knock-on-your-door-mid-series' Hesson suggested to the English Press that his team were not merely the entree for the coming Ashes series and they would give England another shock if they were treated as such.  Well as much as I support the team I feel it necessary to point out that we really are the entree course in a bloated summer and winter of cricket for the cricket establishment.  That's OK though, use it and do what New Zealand does well - fight from the corner.

Even IF there wasn't so much cricket following our appearance on English shores, even if England were set to play 5 tests each against Sri Lanka and Bangladesh after us, this tour is still an entree.  It's the classic English fixtures list where a low-ranked team has to play in cool May conditions for 2 measly games that the home side will almost certainly win ONE of (ensuring they don't lose the series) - second test is at Leeds? Done.  It allows England to play 5-test series against Australia and South Africa in the warmth of July and August which is all they really want to do every summer.  The real indication of how the thing works is that every team that plays in May is forced to splinter its squad due to IPL commitments which ensures key opposition players (lets be honest, key batsmen) don't turn up till the night before the first test and weaken their chances further.  Well if England want to play warm-up rounds against weak opposition like that then that says enough about how they think and operate but we don't need to make it easy for them.

It is true, despite the 0-0 draw last month and a fine victory in Sri Lanka last year, that New Zealand is still a poorly ranked cricket team and we shouldn't be surprised that we end up playing the May-tests in England.  The goal is simply to improve our rankings over time so that we can be the team playing in July and August and let Australia play in May (imagine it).  If we are to be the first course this summer then we use that to our advantage.  We have begun tours quite badly in recent years, often losing by massive margins in the opening test only to either win or gain a respectful draw/loss in the second match, but we cannot do that this time around.  Lords is where we have to try and steal our best result because Leeds in Headingly is as much about the toss and weather as actual skill.  I would love to see England have to fight for a win in Headingly instead of us.

Now in terms of the team make up I think the following 11 should play at Lords*

1. Fulton
2. Rutherford
3. Williamson
4. Taylor
5. Brownlie
6. McCullum (c)
7. Watling (wk)
8. Martin
9. Wagner
10. Southee
11. Boult

*under the assumption that the Lords surface is the usual one that offers a bit of swing but mainly seam movement and the weird impact of the 'Lords Slope' before flattening out to a road by day 3

The main exclusions here you will notice are Guptill (no form) and Bracewell (unlucky that Wanger is taking more wickets at present).  However you need to play the team with a plan in mind to dismiss the opposition batsmen: Cook and Trott.  Both have certain technical disadvantages against left-arm pace and swing and add the slope of the pitch into that equation and Boult/Wagner should be the best chance.  I don't think it will really swing that much for Southee - a brave punter would drop him for Bracewell but that would be a BIG call - but the real interesting spot is that of Bruce Martin.  Now Martin is a poor-man's Daniel Vettori - not quite as good a batsman or bowler as Vettori but honest and hard working in both facets - so lets not kid ourselves there, but he's done enough to be on tour certainly (although neither test is at a spin-friendly ground like Edgbaston or Old Trafford).  Do we need a spinner at Lords?  Are we guilt tripping ourselves into thinking we need one for balance?
I honestly don't know; without Kevin Pietersen in the opposition line-up the automatic advantage of slow-left-arm-spin is gone but is it wise to rely on Kane Williamson to be the spin option?  In the end there is probably enough balance and potential in the 11 players named above to do the job if given a bit of luck and some good bowling to Cook and Trott.  Either way I will be glued to the TV well into the night for what is always a fascinating tour for New Zealand teams

One last note: the 1st test at Lords will be the 100th First Class match of Ross Taylor's career which will be a nice moment, just hope he celebrates it with a century or two...

Well that's it from here and I hope you join me again
It's good bye for now

The search for The Don's successor: an exercise in futility

Hello and welcome back to my blog

With no major cricket happening at the moment (the IPL hasn't held my attention much this season) I thought I would throw a question up for discussion: Who is the best after Sir. Donald Bradman?  The question has floated around cricinfo of late so I thought I would throw my two cents in as well.  First it is important to get back to first principles and examine why the question exists at all, then I will mention some of the common answers to the question before putting forward my best suggestion.

Every article on the subject includes the line, or words to the effect of, 'you cannot get past the stats' and nor should there be an article that isn't bound by Bradman's numbers, stats that have overshadowed cricket since his retirement in 1948.  If you're an English cricket fan you might sheepishly suggest that his numbers overshadowed the game since the end of the 1930 Ashes tour, but I get ahead of myself.  The facts are:

Sir. D. G. Bradman (1928/29-1948)

• 52 tests, 80 innings/10 not-outs, 6996 runs @ 99.94 with 29 centuries and 13 half-centuries, High score of 334. (PLUS 28,000+ first class runs @ 95 with 117 centuries)
• He made 2 triples centuries (also a 299*)
• He also made 10 other double centuries - one every 5 test matches!
• In the 1930 Ashes series he made an astonishing - and still unbeaten - 974 runs (innings of 8, 131, 254, 1, 334, 14 and 232).

His first series as captain was the 1936/37 Ashes series in which his team did poorly in tough conditions, 0-2 down after two tests before he made 270 in Melbourne, 212 in Adelaide and 169 in Melbourne again to win the series 3-2 - the ONLY instance of a team winning after being 0-2 down.
Indeed he was hardly diminished by captaincy, as so many batting-captains are, averaging 101 while leading Australia - Richie Benaud often lords him as Australia's finest captain.  To illustrate his value to the team 23/29 centuries came in the 30 victories celebrated in his 52 match career.  His ability to dominate a series wasn't restricted to early in a tour either, his average actually increases test by test (over 100 in the 3rd and 4th matches of a series) and he averaged 130 in the 3rd innings of test matches where most batsmen begin to drop off.
He was simply the master batsman of his age and the staggering degree to which that was true suggests he could have been just as destructive in any age of cricket.  He was asked in the 1990s by Warne and Tendulkar what he thought of cricket today and how he might go, with little pause he suggested his average would probably drop to 70.  They further asked how he came to that conclusion to which he grinned in reply 'well 70 isn't a bad average considering I turned 90 this week!'.

Now I am not fond of being in the majority on cricket matters but in the case of Bradman I and most writers/commentators believe that not only does he have no equal but there is sunshine between him and the next best, the question is really just the degree of sunshine.  Several names are often sighted as coming close to his genius.  Sir. Garfield Sobers, who made 8000 runs, took over 200 wickets (with pace, swing and finger & wrist spin) as well as amazing fielding skills, was probably the greatest 'cricketer' of all time but whether he was close to Bradman in pure batting terms is an interesting discussion - it is true that he averaged around 60 for most of his career.  His predecessor of West Indian batting talent, George Headley was named the 'Black Bradman' for his ability to score consistently in a similar vain to his Australian rival.  Headley had to play in an otherwise average side only new to test cricket and I wonder what he might have achieved if he had played in the West Indies teams of the 60s, 70s and 80s.
In England the best argument goes for Sir. Jack Hobbs who dominated batting for almost 30 years before Bradman arrived, and could play brilliant innings on any surface as well as the record of 199 first-class centuries.  Although spare a thought for poor Walter Hammond who is probably underrated only because his career ran parallel to The Don who overtook every record Hammond tried to set.  South Africans place two greats up for inspection with Barry Richards and Graeme Pollock but their careers were never fully realised due to the isolation of their nation during the 1970s and 1980s.
In my lifetime there have been 2 (perhaps 4) individuals who dared to answer my question.  Sachin Tendulkar, the most successful batsman of all time has played any number of amazing innings and carried the attack to quality bowling all over the world in conditions alien to his native India.  Brian Lara has probably come closest to Bradman in the modern era, in terms of making big runs with scores of 375 and 400 (as well as his remarkable run of form against Australia in 1999).  Then there is Ricky Ponting who dominated for most of the first decade this century and finally Jacques Kallis who is till churning out centuries with remarkable consistency.
The latter two, it must be said, thrived in an age of relative weakness in terms of fast bowlers.  While I probably place Ponting higher than Kallis, this would only be due to his ability to attack from any position as well as defend when it was required; a more complete top-order batsman as Kallis has a reputation for scoring runs how-and-when he wants (great for his average but not always for the team).  Lara's genius was almost artful in its execution at the expense of any and every bowler that came across him in form.  If he has a blot on his career, a weakness in his setup it would have to be the extended form slumps that appeared to almost be a product of his skill - he was so talented that when form deserted him his natural instincts could not be curbed and thus he would appear so fragile only to suddenly smash another century.  Tendulkar, again a genius but if he has a negative attribute to his legacy it would perhaps be the opposite to Lara and that is a lack of desire to truly pile on runs, to dominate, to score 300 in a day.  The remarkable thing about Bradman was the ability AND the desire to bat all day for 300 - a kind of Tendulkar + Sehwag cricket entity.

For my opinion I want to single out the FEAR.  The fear of bowling to Bradman.  Young South African and Indian teams almost subsided before the game had started against him while England devised a regrettable bowling strategy (Bodyline) in the face of his batting power.  New Zealand  never played against a team including him but given what Hammond did to us (227 and 336* in consecutive innings) one can only imagine.  Fear and the skill to back it up is what destroys oppositions and the greats have always generated in abundance.  Eventually players and whole teams begin to fear what you might do, as much as what you actually do, so much so they end up letting it happen because of that fear as much as any skill.  Great batsmen fail to live up to the fear generated by their records as much as anyone but Bradmans was the least prone to this end.  My pick for his successor did naturally fail a little more often than The Don but in terms of generating fear in his opponents, no one has come close Sir. Vivian Richards.
It is true to say that Viv averaged 50, he held the record for most runs in a calendar year for over 30 years, he has the record for the fastest test century (56 balls) and thrilled crowds throughout his career.  However as time goes by and his records are beaten for whatever reason (helmets, flat pitches, worse bowlers, etc) it is his presence that remains etched in the mind.  The stride, the swagger, the nonchalant chewing of gum and then the blasting of a cricket ball - off any bowler, any length to any part of the ground.  He was no slogger lacking of grace, no fair-weather performer lacking of technique, no fool lacking of temperament but a titan of batting that batted no.3 in the finest team in the world for two decades.  No one before or since has been able to match his aggression with as much success and it was that match of seemingly antipodean traits that instilled fear in others.  To sum up his contempt for bowlers I would point to the batting helmet that became required protection for all batsmen of his era - except Viv who never used one but preferred to hook fast bowlers to the boundary instead.

Donald Bradman secured a position in cricket history as its greatest batsman that may never be truly challenged but if you look back at the career of Vivian Richards you get an idea of what it would take.  Viv's tenacity and nerve matched with natural skill and just enough determination fashioned a career second only to The Don's in terms of the fear he generated by simply walking out to take guard.  If you were to take that presence and add the skill of Tendulkar, the hunger of Lara, the boldness of Ponting and the consistency of Kallis (in our lifetimes) you would come close to replicating the man but you would still miss one thing - Bradman dreamt it first and that takes something different entirely.