Crucket

Forecasts predicted rain at Dunedin, but nothing apparent here on the Rain Radar. Something building near south Canterbury, but the cricket looks safe at the moment.

Check out the first three rounds of the round up (in one convenient package) back at Mike on Cricket.

Round 4 of the State Championship consisted of two games, while Auckland played the West Indies. CD beat Otago to go to the top of the table, despite Wgtn being in crushing form (averaging nearly 500/innings over 3 games). The innings of the week however was scored by Auckland, who swatted away the WI bowlers on a pitch that is oozing runs.

ND 310 & 198
Wgtn 520
Wgtn win by inns and 12 runs

Auck. 587/7
WI 431/7
Match drawn

Otago 357 & 281
CD 378 & 261/2
CD win by 8 wickets

Top bat: It is hard to go past Richard Jones’ double hundred, but Josh Brodie’s maiden century deserves mention. Franklin’s 160 may have helped his recall to the Black Caps.
Top bowl: Gillespie’s 8/124 match.

Points table

The newspapers are all over the selections for the West Indies series. Rather than rephrase the debate in my own words, I thought I would look at the selections separately, starting with the batsmen.

Jamie How

Looking at How’s record, he must be charmed. He averages less then 25, but has outlasted a slew of other openers: Redmond most recently, but Bell before him, as well as Cumming, Papps and Hamish Marshall, most of whom have not done much worse than How. He did show some real class in the two series against England earlier this year, with 428 runs in 12 innings, and the legacy of that should keep his place in the team secure for at least the rest of the season. Also, with a career now amounting to 30 innings, he is our most experienced batsman (excluding McCullum) – a senior member of the team, believe it or not. With no one else really challenging for the spot, How’s experience and proven ability are valuable.

Tim McIntosh

The dark horse in the selection as he is the only debutant. In first-class cricket he has the ability to score really big. Already this season he has scored a 191 for Auckland, and last year he scored a 268, with a 205 the year before that. The problem he has is that aside from these big innings, he doesn’t get a hell of a lot of runs. In each season, about half his runs come from these big single hauls. To my mind, we want the opposite in the Black Caps; we want an opener who doesn’t necessarily get big scores, but always gets a start. McIntosh is due for a trial though – the next opener through the revolving door – and he is one of my players to watch for the series.

Daniel Flynn

Has little in the way of results to show (still working towards his first test 50), but has impressed with his technique and approach to the game. Worth persevering with then. The talk is that he will be promoted to 3, which I have already suggested would be a good move. Flynn might not do much better at 3, but the test will be whether Ryder does better at 5.

Ross Taylor

Shouldered with the responsibility of being our chief batsman since Flem’s retirement, and has responded well. We know he’s got more in him and we know we’ll see it as he gains experience.

Jesse Ryder

The wunderkind has had a distinctly average start to his test career. However, as long as he keeps his head, there is no reason he should ever be out of the team.

Brendon McCullum

The gloss seems to have come off McCullum recently. He was a superstar earlier this year due to this one-day exploits and his IPL paypacket, with commentators gushing about him being the new Gilchrist. In tests he doesn’t nearly live up to that hype – however, he still is one of our best batsmen. I think he is best at 7, where he gets the chance to graft a bit with the all-rounders, but also pick up bonus runs with the tail-enders against tiring bowlers.

It’s the trend these days to name series after big names of old from the two teams. E.g. Chappell–Hadlee, Border–Gavaskar. There isn’t a grand history between NZ and the Windies as there is between many other pairings of sides, so who could we choose to name the series after? Would the Goodall–Croft Trophy be too uncharitable?

Whatever we might call it, this test series is the battle of the cellar dwellers – the 7th and 8th ranked teams battling it out for that coveted 7th place. (While just across the Tasman the battle of the table toppers is about to get underway. Is there any symmetry there, or is it just coincidence?)

The recent head-to-heads go pretty solidly in NZ’s favour. In the last 10 years through three series we’ve won five tests and they’ve won none. Since the last series in 05/06, the Windies have done nothing much, whereas the Black Caps roller coaster has taken a dive. We’re starting this series more evenly matched that we have been since the 80s.

There’s a good deal of optimism around the traps. Adam Parore reckons we’re the better team. Are people too quick to forget the Aus series just a couple of weeks back? Aus are of course a stronger team, but barring one strong innings each from Bracken and Lee, the capitulation in Australia was due almost entirely to our own fragility. This home series is going to be even and it’s going to be close. After looking at our form this year, I’m picking 1-1.

Players to watch

Tim McIntosh: He only cashes in one innings in four, but when he cashes in he cashes in big. With four innings in prospect, he’s odds on for one big one.
Andy Moles: The other debutant in the team. How quickly can he turn the team around?
James Franklin: I’ve been hanging out for his return. If he bowls to his old standard, he’ll be our biggest wicket taker. Chances are though he’s sacrificing some of bowling strength for some batting strength.

The haves: Gayle, Sarwan, Chanderpaul, Benn, Taylor and Powell all won big in the final of the Standford 20 for 20. Are they worth a million dollars each?
The have nots: Baker, Baugh, Chattergoon, Edwards, Johnson, Marshall, Nash, Ramdin and Roach were not lucky recipients of the Stanford windfall. Can they prove themselves against their more illustrious team mates?

The test team for the upcoming series against the West Indies has been named:

Daniel Vettori (c)
Jamie How
Tim McIntosh
Daniel Flynn
Ross Taylor
Jesse Ryder
Jacob Oram
Brendon McCullum
James Franklin
Mark Gillespie
Iain O’Brien
Jeetan Patel

In: Tim McIntosh, Jacob Oram, James Franklin, Mark Gillespie, Jeetan Patel.
Out: Aaron Redmond, Chris Martin, Grant Elliott, Tim Southee, Peter Fulton.

You can read discussion about the selections here, here, here and here.

If I can manage it, I’m going to take a look at each of these selections individually – even if it is just a sentence.

Cricinfo has analysed the Black Caps’ recent batting performance and have revealed what must the most obvious fact in world cricket today – our batting sucks.

Since April 2006, our batsmen have average 23.22 runs (excluding Bangladesh and Zimbabwe). This is easily the worst of any team; the West Indies, now ranked higher than us, have an average of 27.89 for the same period. There are numerous other appalling statistics in the article that demonstrate that we really are in a terrible slump.

However, amongst the gloom, there are some very encouraging facts. Firstly, our bowling during this period has been outstanding. Our bowlers have averaged 32.56, not far off South Africa at the top of the table with 30.13, and our economy rate has actually been the best of all. Most interesting though is that our batting average during the whole of the 2000s to date has been 27.67 (ex. Bang/Zim), which by our standards is pretty awesome.

This got me wondering about the date that the statistician has chosen to begin his analysis from. April 2006 is not even the beginning of a season, it’s before the end of the 05/06 season. It is clear that this date was chosen because the series immediately before it would mangle his statistics. Immediately before this cut off date, we played the Windies at home, beating them 2-0, and before that we beat Zimbabwe 2-0 and Sri Lanka 1-0 (a series where our batsmen averaged 45.55). The period chosen by the statistician includes the following series: 2 away series vs South Africa, 1 away vs Australia, home and away vs Bangladesh (which are excluded from the stats), home and away vs England and home vs Sri Lanka (as well as nearly a whole year where we played no tests). While there is a fair range of opponents there, any period that includes 2 series in fortress South Africa has been a rough period.

We don’t need statistics to tell us how bad our batsmen have been of late and I’m not going to use stats to try and convince you otherwise. However, there is nothing in any of this to suggest that we have a serious long-term problem with our batting. We just need to push our batting up a few points, maybe even less than 5, and we should be able to hope for the sort of success we had in the early half of the 2000s. (Push it up by about 20 and we can challenge the Aussies next time we meet them.)

After a couple of years posting at Mike on Cricket, it is now time for me to strike out on my own, make my own mark, build my own empire. So here it is, my new blog:

CRUCKET

So what can you expect at Crucket? Well, more of the same you were getting from me at Mike’s – half-informed, half-arsed half-analysis/half-flippancy, posted irregularly, un-proofread. Always about cricket, mostly about New Zealand. Blindly parochial, optimistic beyond all reason. Premium blog material.

I’m also hoping to work on the design of the blog over time, part of the reason for shifing from Blogger to WordPress. Maybe I’ll also get to add some functions to the blog to help us follow the cricket in New Zealand.

So thanks for visiting. I hope you’ll hang out.