Crucket

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):