Crucket

Earlier today, I suggested some equivalence between Gambhir’s innings of 137 (off 436) and Ryder’s of 201. Both innings have benefited the two batsmen in their rankings, as noted in today’s news.

Now while there is little to compare between Gambhir and Ryder given their difference stages in their careers (Gambhir now into his 4th year and Ryder merely in his 6th month), it is fun to see exactly what the last test did to their ratings.

Gambhir went into the Napier test with a rating of 801. After the test his rating is now 812, 11 points higher.

Ryder went to Napier with a rating of 486. His double century has pushed him to 607. A climb of 121.

Make of that what you will. I emphasise that nothing can be drawn from this comparison, considering as I said the different stages of their careers, the fact that Gambhir batted twice and the blindness of the ratings system to match context.

So we are back from Bizarro World; India is batting well again. Holding out for two whole days after the follow on was a study in concentration and technique, and the draw was well deserved.

With the benefit of hindsight, it is easy to suggest that the pitch saved India or that Vettori did himself no favours by enforcing the follow on. However, looking at things at the end of day three, you would have to back yourself to take 10 wickets over two days on any pitch, but given the nature of the pitch, you would want to give yourself as much of those two days to take the wickets.

As I suggested in a previous post, if India were going to save this test they would need someone to put in a performance equalling Ryder’s 201. In Gambhir’s 137 they got that performance. Obviously it is well off a double century, and scored at a SR of 31, it was hardly dazzling, but it did as much to save the match as Ryder’s did to set up a potential victory.

But having praised India, let’s not forget that NZ ruled this match. While India will take the honours from days 4 and 5, they were forced to play at an extremely tentative 2 runs an over, even for the majority of day 5 when a draw seemed certain. If anything, NZ dominated too much in the first three days, leaving India with no victory to chase and no option but to go all-out stodge.

So what happened in the cricket today? A mere 205 runs scored, at a glacial SR of 38. In the 3rd innings there have been only 122 scoring shots played off 644 balls bowled. India merely occupying the crease, doing everything in their power to avoid getting out, to the complete and utter neglect of other considerations. I swear, so focussed was he on precisely raising a willow wall to every delivery, Dravid even shut down his facial muscles, until he got out. The fielding team, the spectators, the scorers were ground to sand by boredom. Basically test cricket at its most glorious.

If the previous three days have been some of the best days of cricket I have ever seen a New Zealand team play, today’s effort by India is one of the great stonewalling efforts.

It would be fair now to predict a draw in this test.

There have been several hopeful stories of NZ’s ICL rebels possibly being welcomed back to the fold due to a reconciliation between the ICL and BCCI. In all of those stories, the hope turned out to be despairing. There would be no reconciliation between the two.

The only credible end to the impasse with the BCCI refusing to recognise the ICL was for the ICL to fold. With the ICL’s cancelling of its March “World Series”, the collapse of the ICL seems to be on the cards. Another strong indication that the ICL is at least shrivelling up is the report that an offer has been made to the New Zealand members of the league that they can be released from their contracts if they choose.

If this report is true, it is a very interesting development. While it might be optimistic to think that gaining release from their contracts would automatically remove the rebel stigma from them (Hamish Marshall has left the ICL but is still treated like a pariah), it is still a necessary step in their rehabilitation.

The NZ players in the ICL are Shane Bond, Darryl Tuffey, Nathan Astle, Craig McMillan, Chris Harris, Andre Adams and Lou Vincent. Astle, McMillan and Harris are all effectively retired or beyond selection. They would have no good reason to ditch their contracts. The other four however are interesting cases. Adams and Vincent would remain potential selections for New Zealand (considerably more so with Bracewell moving on), though they would have to fight hard for places in the squad. Shane Bond is a bit of a mystery. Almost everyone involved in cricket in New Zealand would want to see him back playing for New Zealand. However, he has stated many times that he would not come back even if the opportunity arose. It might also invalidate a lot of the content of his tell-all autobiography. Of course, he hasn’t absolutely ruled it out, to my knowledge, and he could always add a happy-ending final few chapters of leading the Black Caps bowling at the 2011 World Cup and some IPL glory.

If anyone is going to make best use of this opportunity it is Darryl Tuffey. While he is by no means NZ’s best bowler, our heavy artillery is so depleted, he would be welcomed back enthusiastically.

(What’s going on here? Who switched the teams around before this test? It is as if we have entered a parallel universe where everything is the same but completely opposite.)

The best cricket in this test could be ahead of us, but be sure that if India save this test it will be a Herculean effort, surpassing Ryder’s 201 and Martin’s 3/89, in context if not necessarily in numbers.

I’m not prepared to write this test off as an NZ win yet – I don’t imagine anyone is. So it suprised me that so many commentators or betting-odds setters were earlier painting this test as a likely draw, right from the first day. The more the Black Caps scored, the more a draw was anticipated.

619 is a massive score, even on the best of batting pitches, and chasing it was going to be a hard ask, even for the Indian batting line up. More than that though, when faced with a target of 420, on the way to chasing 620, the pressure is going to be high, and pressure is not generally helpful in test cricket.

We know this Indian batting line up is good – awesome in fact. You only have to look  back a week to find evidence of that. But not even an awesome team can rattle off 420 runs, under pressure, any day of the week.

Those of you who tuned out at the fall of Guptill’s wicket yesterday just may have missed a little bit of New Zealand cricket history in the making. I don’t want to put the mockers on the two them (after all, Ryder is just one off-field indiscretion away from losing his place and Taylor has suffered a big form slump in only the second year of his international career), but Jesse Ryder and Ross Taylor should be the backbone of New Zealand’s batting for years to come. Together and individually, they ought to break most of NZ’s batting records.

I wonder if the Indian followers of this series fully understand the significance of Ryder and Taylor announcing themselves in this way. To do that, you have to appreciate the bowel-evacuating terror felt by NZ fans when Stephen Fleming announced his retirement from test cricket, so soon after losing Nathan Astle (along with the fading away of Craig McMillan, Mark Richardson and Scott Styris), leaving us with batting stocks bereft either of ability or experience. The only hope to cling to was two, or either one of two, young tyros. And that is very slim hope.

Serious cricket fans had been following Jesse and Ross from their age-grade days. They were both clearly gifted, but it was an open question as to whether they would make it in the NZ team. Taylor has a natural rashness that can get the better of him and Ryder has issues outside cricket to deal with. But with yesterday’s partnership they have both fulfilled their early promise to some good degree, and they did it together. In the NZ context, this partnership has something of the significance of (and let’s just be clear that I am only making the most superficial of comparisons) Sachin Tendulkar and Vinod Kambli’s 1988 schoolboy heroics.

I have graphed the partnership (rather less explicitly than my last such effort). This graph shows the accumulated score for each of the first 6 batsmen (the last two * of course):

Congratulations to the White Ferns for making it to the final of the Women’s World Cup and for fighting hard when things got rough.

Batting first, the Ferns got themselves in trouble by losing their entire top order for less than 100. Many of the wickets went to rash shots, suggesting that they were having difficulty adjusting after the batting fest against Pakistan. However, a 63 run partnership between Lucy Doolan and Nicola Browne pushed the score up to what turned out to be a fairly competitive total.

In complete contrast, England didn’t lose their first wicket until they were 74. And then in the late-middle overs Aimee Mason and Doolan turned the match around by picking up three quick wickets and stifling the scoring. Suddenly the stroll to victory became a struggle and the game wasn’t won until the 47th over.

Particular praise must go to Doolan whose match figures were quite outstanding: 48 off 57 batting, 3/23 off 10 bowling.

And of course, huge congratulations to the victors England, who played a great game in knocking over the top order and keeping the scoring in check. Nicki Shaw was a star of course with 4 wickets, but all the bowlers got wickets and bowled tight. Sarah Taylor and Caroline Atkins did excellent work making the chase safe, so even the semi collapse couldn’t threaten the final result.

So disappointed was I in the Black Caps’ limp, unmanly performance in the first test, I went down to Mitre 10 and bought myself a power saw and spent the day cutting a wardrobe into little pieces for disposal. It was a lot of fun, but didn’t make me feel any better about the cricket.

There are a few comforts of the schadenfreude variety to be found on the home page of Cricinfo however, negative though that variety is. Firstly, Australia are doing much worse against South Africa than we did against India, so far. (How long has it been since Australia last lost by an innings? More than 10 years.) Also, the West Indies walked away from an ODI victory because the coach read the Duckworth-Lewis chart wrong. That is a new and quite delicious flavour of stupidy.

Wouldn’t it be most fair for umpires to tend towards giving greater benefit of the doubt to a struggling team? I think it would, though I suspect in reality the opposite tends to happen. I mean, the Aussies never frickin’ seem to have their appeals turned down.

It is frankly inconceivable that Tendulkar’s catch off McIntosh was given without consultation with the third umpire after the precedent with Ryder’s catch off Dhoni (for which the on-field umpires conferred and consulted with the third umpire before giving it not-out). Both catches were equally dubious and the umpires should have treated them the same.

But what can you do but grumble. If the referral system was in place, nothing would have changed. Even though Tendulkar’s catch was equivalent to Ryder’s, if it had been referred by McIntosh, the third umpire wouldn’t have changed the on-field umpire’s call. It would be easier in a way however to be able to complain about been done in by “the system” than to feel hard done by inconsistent umpiring.

It is important in sport to be realistic about what is likely to not go your way; so e.g. when one of the top 6 scores heavily against you, you don’t despondent, you just factor it in. Just because Tendulkar scores 160, you shouldn’t then let your shoulders droop and allow the tail to score 80-odd.

This applies not just within a match, but also to bigger pictures. Currently, the Black Caps are 166 runs behind with 7 wickets in hand. Pretty discouraging for the first match in the series. However, if you recall that we generally lose a match by an innings in every series, things don’t look any worse than usual. We’re not really doing that bad.