Crucket

In the wake of the sickening terrorist attack on Mumbai, two cricketing stories stand in sharp contrast.

In the first, Sachin Tendulkar, India’s biggest hero, dedicated his match-winning efforts in Chennai to the victims of the attack. It was a heartening, if entirely symbolic, story.

The second story, written by Peter Roebuck, highlights that Javed Miandad’s son is married to the daughter of Dawood Ibrahim, India’s biggest villain, with possible connections to the attack. Roebuck’s story is largely sensationalist; the wedding between the Miandads and Ibrahims happened three years ago and Ibrahim’s connections to the Mumbai attacks are still being established. The main thrust of Roebuck’s article is the possible connections of Ibrahim to match fixing, which is orders of magnitude less serious than terrorism. Even so, it is alarming to be reminded that Pakistan Cricket’s director general and hence a major public figure in Pakistan is linked by marriage to one of the worlds most wanted criminal dons.

I’d say honours even at the end of the first day. The Windies might be happier if they were still holding onto another wicket or two, but they’ll be looking at 300 and change by the middle of tomorrow, which the Black Caps will have to work hard to match on current form. It’s a good place for the match to be.

The two teams look very even at the moment, with Chanderpaul making up for the weakness of the rest of his team and a general level of competancy in the Black Caps making up for the fact that we have no stars.A draw would be a fair result.

I don’t actually think a draw is at all likely with the Windies 6 down at the end of day one, but I was thinking about a draw before the match began and what the consequences that would have on the contest for 7th place. (You can tell how much being 8th is preying on my mind.)

The ICC test championship ranking system gives a team points in a test series based on the strength of the opposition, with half points given for a draw. If you do better than expected, given the opposition, you score points. If you do worse (i.e. lose to a lower ranked team), you lose points. So, if the test at Napier is a draw, NZ will actually gain points while the Windies will lose points. I was wondering if it is possible to draw a test series and thereby fall below your opponent.

NZ and Windies are currently less than one point apart. We are both listed as being on 81 points. We are in fact 0.55 points apart, which is surely as close as you can get. A quick calculation shows that a drawn series will bring us closer, but won’t change our relative rankings. The gap will close to 0.46 points.

I still think it is conceivable, in the mathematical morass that is the ICC system, to draw a series with a slightly higher ranked team and overtake them. Just not quite in this case.

The McLean park wicket is supposed to be a belter. Which is great of course. Except that the Windies strength is their batting, as the Cricinfo preview tells us. We’re also hearing that the Black Caps batsmen were not looking good at practice, hinted at maybe in this article. The Windies certainly sound the more confident side, at least that’s what Tony Cozier reckons.

So advantage West Indies it would seem.

I don’t quite know how this happened. We have been beating them quite easily for the last 10 years. How did they suddenly become the stronger team? They really haven’t been doing much. Perhaps most of it is down to Chanderpaul. He’s the world’s best batsman just at the moment, you must have heard.

The Windies have played at Napier once before, but the game was rained off early. The other two matches played at Napier this century show its wicket’s capacity for runs. In 2005 NZ scored an innings of over 500 against Sri Lanka, who almost managed 500 in reply. Earlier this year, you’ll remember, England and NZ scored over 400 in their second innings (after pretty disappointing 1st innings admittedly).

There’s a very nice game of cricket shaping up across the Tasman. South Africa hit Australia hard early yesterday but are now struggling to dispatch the last two, with the score inching towards 400. (Oh. Siddle gone. All out 375.)

It looks like it is going to be a cracker and the cricketing world is going to love it.

Personally though, there is something painful about following this test. I want both teams to lose – not just draw, but lose. So my enjoyment of it is conflicted. It was marvellous to see Ponting edge his first ball, but very disheartening to see de Villiers snaffle it.

Three matches and three draws. A bit of a wash out, literally in the case of the top of the table clash between CD and Wgtn (which CD had the better of it must be conceded). I don’t know if it rained in Auckland, but the Outer Oval wicket seems too unsporting for a result over 6 days – this time around 1191 runs were scored for only 25 wickets.

Otago 418 & 343/7
Auck 430/8 dec.
Match drawn

CD 523
Wgtn 376/7
Match drawn

ND 430 & 152/5 dec.
Cant. 265 & 294/8
Match drawn

Top bat: Sinclair’s 164 was the top score, but I’m disqualifying him for petulance. Instead I’ll give top bat to his team mate Bevan Griggs for his aggressive 143.
Top bowl: Suave’s mate Tarun Nethula bowled a great 4/100 innings (including a c&b, yee hah!), following up on 2/75 in the first innings.

Points table

Thank goodness that England and India are around to resuscitate test cricket, as it nearly expired during the test in Dunedin. Who would have thought that losing a couple of days would make such a difference to a test featuring New Zealand.

The game might have had an exciting conclusion if it hadn’t been rained off, as the teams were looking very even, but the 2 1/2 days we did get to see was underwhelming. Which is a real shame as the rugby heads had just started to pay attention.

So what did we get? A fine century by Jerome Taylor – excellent in fact – but no others amongst the 700-odd runs. Six wickets by Vettori, but most of those tail enders. A rare hit wicket to chuckle at and some ‘historic’ 3rd umpire decisions to treasure being part of.

So on to Napier and the series decider (didn’t that come around quickly). The Metservice forecasts are promising. And despite the fact that few of the players really fired at Dunedin, they do look promising too. There are plenty of runs to be had at Napier. And wickets too (recall Sidebottom 7/47 and Southee’s 5/55 last year).

Iain O’Brien’s blog has been a crash hit, generating praise and controversy all to quickly in its brief life. It is not surprising perhaps that it has been syndicated by Cricinfo.

Just a day after urging us all to join O’Brien’s Facebook fanclub, JRod is disappointed that he has been absorbed by the evil Cricinfo empire.

One good thing about the Cricinfo version is that it includes photos, including this one of Iain in his evil empire uniform:

Compare:

Mark Gillespie

A contentious selection. Replaces Chris Martin, who, popular opinion has it, was hard done by to be dropped for this series. And beyond his selection, Dizzy’s popularity is divided. I like him, but then I’m a Wellingtonian. He is a wicket taker – he has over 200 for Wellington. But he gives away runs, and he does it by bowling too short too often. Can such an unsophisticated approach work at international level?

Iain O’Brien

Plenty’s been said about O’Brien already. He was a contentious selection last year as his earlier efforts for the Black Caps weren’t impressive. However, he came good during the tour of England. He now largely replicates his excellent first-class record in tests.

Jeetan Patel

It is tough being the second spinner behind Vettori. And it’s not going to get easier. In an international career already two years old, Jeets has played only 5 tests.

Kyle Mills

Back in the team, leapfrogging both Martin and Southee (and O’Brien in the bowling line up). Very surprising. He’s in because of his batting, which is fair enough because his batting is decent, but he’s selected as a bowler despite being overlooked in Australia behind two others, which just shows the contortions you can get into when your selections get too clever.

The last test between NZ and the Windies in Dunedin way back in 1980 might have gone differently if the West Indies could have challenged some of the umpires’ decisions. We’ll never know if it would have changed the result of that match, but it almost certainly would have prevented the acrimony that developed in the series.

For those who not entirely familiar with NZ cricketing history, here is a report on the match from Wisden’s archives. The link requires registration, but to summarise: the Windies arrived full of confidence after soundly beating Australia at home (who incidentally had not won a test series themselves for about 2 years) but found things harder going in Dunedin and found themselves facing defeat and feeling that the umpiring hadn’t gone their way, culminating in Michael Holding kicking over the stumps when John Parker was given not out in a poor umpiring decision (though Parker only ended up making 5).

Things got much worse in the next test in Christchurch (where the West Indies considered throwing the test in protest and Colin Croft shoulder barged the umpire Fred Goodall), but the acrimony had started in Dunedin. The ill-feeling generated in this series has largely eroded, but the memories remain, which is a real shame as it takes the gloss off a hard fought series and overshadows the several other hard fought series the NZ and WI had played.

I suppose that returning to Dunedin now, where the troubles began, is reason enough to revisit the controversy, as Fazeer Mohammad has in this article. It alarms me however that so many years after it happened, some West Indians continue to maintain that the NZ umpires in that series cheated. (Mohammad even praises Holding’s stump kicking form.) There’s no doubt that the umpires made mistakes (some of the batsmen have admitted that they should have been given out), but cheating? Jeez, get over it!

Personally, I suspect the Windies’ indignance in discovering that they weren’t unbeatable was as much a problem as the umpiring. But the accepted story seems to be that the Windies were robbed.

A wonky distribution of runs amongst the batting order is a feature of NZ cricket. The success or failure of an innings often depends on the middle order. It is extremely lucky for us then that we have such good allrounders. In fact, our allrounders are the best players in the team.

Daniel Vettori

Excellent bowler and middle-order batsman par exellence, so not much to say about his selection. He’d make just about every team in the world, maybe not for his bowling in some teams, but certainly for his all-round ability.

Jacob Oram

Again, an instant selection, barring injury. Even though he often bats at 7, he is one of our best batsmen. His bowling is also ‘handy’. So he wouldn’t hold his place in the team based on his bowling alone (does that disqualify him as an allrounder?), but considering that 3rd seamers are often in the mould of Scott Styris, Oram’s bowling is a huge asset.

James Franklin

It remains to be seen how the injury layoff has effected Franklin’s game. Before injury he was second only to Shane Bond as a bowler, so that should now make him our best. However, his injury is likely to have slowed him down and he is unlikely to bowl as much as he did before. Pre-injury, it really seemed that he had not fulfilled his potential as a batsman. There is a big difference between his test and first-class averages. He has been working hard on his batting, so it may be that what we lose from his bowling, we gain in his batting.