Crucket

Haddin and Taylor’s centuries against us this year started a round of observations on how we let average players score loads against us.

Another player we have made look good recently is Ryan Sidebottom. He picked up 41 wickets in the 6 test he played against us in 2008 at an average of 18.48, and we were in awe of him. His rediscovery after years spent fighting his way back into the England team was one of the stories of the year and led to him getting a Wisden Player of the Year nod. However, he got a mere 6 wickets against South Africa when they toured shortly after us and it is now suspected that his results against us was a blip.

I’ve pinched the schedule I put up at Mike on Cricket and given it its own page:

Schedule 08/09

If you are looking for it in the future you can find a link to it at the very top of the page.

Cricinfo are reviewing the year for each of the test-playing nations. They seem to be starting at the bottom and therefore are covering New Zealand after visiting Zimbabwe and Bangladesh.

It is not a flattering review. Our year can be summed up by the fact that our high point “came in an inconsequential limited-overs series”, with Flynn getting his teeth knocked out being “one of the enduring images of the year in New Zealand cricket”, Vettori’s fine batting was a “a sad reflection” of our top order woes and Fleming’s retirement foretelling Helen Clark’s election defeat. (It had actually occurred to me that there was a parallel between Fleming and Clark’s premature ends.)

So it was a bad yar: 6 losses in tests and 3 of our 4 wins being against Bangladesh. It also followed on from a couple of very tough years including two series played in South Africa, which more than anything caused our celebrated slide in the ranking. Getting to play England so much really helped our ODI record however.

New Zealand’s depth is so shallow, our position is constantly precarious. We are always going to have bad years coming round. 2008 was a real year of transition. The ICL and IPL have really shaken up the ranks. However, slipped in to the middle of the Cricinfo article is a mention of the successful debuts of Ryder, Southee, Flynn and McIntosh and the improved performances of Taylor and O’Brien. And of course Vettori continues to be a star. So actually, a lot of good has come out of 2008.

Hayden would be odds on to keep his place for the final test against South Africa. He has a big record behind him and with Symonds and Lee likely to be replaced, the selectors will be wary of going into a match with too little experience. These are just excuses however, the truth is that everyone is too scared to tell Haydos he has to go. Surely this is his last series, so what use in playing him in the dead rubber rather than giving his replacement a head start?

Good on Balls then for telling him he should go with dignity and to Cricinfo for shaming the selectors for not having the balls to drop him. In fact, they’re writing his obituaries over at Cricinfo already. How good is Haydos? they ask? Only as good as the bowlers are bad is the answer. Hayden will likely finish with an average over 50, 30 hundreds, a high score of 380…an awesome record. However, Hayden only really got going in 2001, 7 years after his debut, but which time “Hayden’s earliest tormentors – Donald and de Villiers; Ambrose, Courtney Walsh and Ian Bishop – had all conked out. Shaun Pollock’s zippiest days were behind him, Chris Cairns’ too. The few lethal quicks still in circulation were playing on the same side as Hayden”

New Zealand essentially won the 2nd 20-20 match 22 overs into it, in the 2nd over of the Windies innings. The Windies were never going to catch up without Gayle to lead them, even though 18 more overs had to pass. In contrast, the 1st 20-20 wasn’t over until 10 balls after the end of the 40th over. Good fun that super over. But maybe if the ideal end to a match is a super-over fight out, we should just go straight to it  and fight out over one over.

Actually, I rather enjoyed the two 2 20-20s. I’ve been suspicious that there is too little time during 20 overs to change the direction of an innings. And while this was demonstrated in the second 20-20, the first was much more interesting, as it seemed over right from the start as Ryder struggled with his timing, but showed a definite shift in the last few overs when NZ managed to claw back a game that the Windies seemed to have under firm control.

One thing I am really liking about 20-20 is that it is so different from test cricket. 50-over cricket, as much as a I like the format, feels largely like test cricket shifted up a single gear. League compared to union perhaps. 20-20 however feels like a paradigm shift. A whole different code – 7s maybe. A player’s 20-20 statistics make no sense in test cricket terms. Bowling and batting averages become irreleveant, with all the importance being in Econ and SR. (I’ve been thinking actually that it might be cool to measure economy and strike rates not from 0 but from 1 run/ball, so an SR of 100 and an Econ of 6 become 0, giving Vettori the stats of SR: 16.66, Econ: -0.2.)

A day later and the disappointment of the test result has faded.

So the test series was drawn. But as that is the best result the Windies have had against us for over 10 years, it feels like a loss.

However, in the last test we were always in front – and it is not inconveivable that with a little luck we might have pulled off one of the most audacious chases in test  history. The Windies’ huge 375 in the third innings, with Gayle’s 197, was the biggest effort of the test, but it was their effort to force a draw, not a victory. And that feels like a win.

When you’ve got a ODI chase on your hands, shouldn’t you use your ODI openers to open?

Yay dammit! South Africa have humbled Australia.

Awesome match. A classic. But I can’t derive too much satisfaction from the result, as I have explained.

However, it was quite amusing to see Ian Chappell have his words turned on him. “Currently, India is energised by the formidable challenge of playing Australia while the prospect still intimidates South Africa,” he claims.

The real measure of where a team stands in relation to Australia is not a computer ranking but how they fare when they play the champions at home. India has displayed the nerve and skill to win matches against Australia on their turf and in the most daunting of venues, the WACA. They are the more worthy heir to Australia’s throne.

Um. Maybe you should have waited for the result of this test before making such a bold claim Ian.

Have we solved half our opening problem? Well, it’s too early to tell, but McIntosh is looking very exciting. You never know, he may be the saviour of another of our problems, that of scoring centuries.

The last century scored by a New Zealander (I think) was Taylor’s 154 at Manchester in May. To find the last century by an opener (ignoring Bell’s 107 against Bangladesh in January, unfairly perhaps, but it does get in the way of my point) we have to go way back to Nottingham ’04 for Fleming’s 117.

Chanderpaul carried his bat through to the end of the West Indian innings this morning, scoring 126. However, if it wasn’t for Nash playing beyond himself and scoring 74 in a partnership of 163, he might not have even got his century. Why does he bat at 5?

This innings has pushed his average over 50, and famously he averages over 100 over the past two years – 112.84 actually, from 1467 runs.

He’s scored 6 centuries in the last two years, but he hasn’t gotten huge totals over that 113 average to push it up so high. His secret is the 9 not outs he has from 22 innings.

Each of those not outs was a 50 or a 100, and each one was an innings cut short. How much could he be scoring if he had partners that would let him carry on.