Having my say
* ring ring *
“Hello. Am I speaking with Ben? I’m calling from a market research company on behalf of New Zealand Cricket. Would you have time to contribute to a survey about the cricket at the Basin Reserve on Saturday?”
“Uh. Yeah, I guess so.”
“Okay great. What I am going to do is ask you about several things about the cricket at the Basin Reserve, and if you could answer by saying whether you were satisfied or dissatisfied with that aspect. …blah blah blah…”
“…blah blah blah…”
“Okay, you answered dissatisfied to three questions, so I’d like to ask you to provide more details about those.”
“Um. Okay.”
“The positions of the food stalls.”
“Yeah, I thought it was really stink how the queues were blocking the path.”
“The music on the loudspeaker.”
“Aw, less Neil Young eh.”
“And the quality of the cricket.”
“Well I’m glad you asked! I thought the quality of the cricket displayed by the Black Caps on Saturday was appaling and basically unacceptable. If I could start with the openers, no in fact, let me go back to the day before when the bowlers gave away too many runs to the Indian tail enders. This is not the first time they have done this – not even the first time in this series. Our bowling suffers terribly because we don’t have bowlers who can take wickets. But anyway, about Saturday. The openers. Really, when are we going to get some half decent openers? Christ, it’s the most important partnership in the whole innings and we cannot come up with a solution. I mean what’s up with McIntosh and Guptill? McIntosh doesn’t finish his footwork until his shot is completed and the bowler’s got the ball back at the top of his mark. And Guptill is shaping up to be a one-day specialist. And then after them we have Flynn, looking like a possum caught in headlights. The pivotal position in the line up and we’ve got a kid in his second season trying to fill it. Gotta give some credit to Taylor I suppose, though out before tea when we need him to bat all day is still a disappointment. And the less said about Ryder the better. Coming off a blinder of a double century where he batted for like eight hours before he played a loose shot and what does he do now? Hangs about for just a couple of overs before going for an ugly slash out wide and high. Expectations on him were too high though. Everyone going on about which records he is going to break, you could only expect him to have a failure. We’re putting too much faith in a guy in only his ninth match. Not that we’re getting much from our experienced players. Franklin’s been around for what, eight years now? Could be that his horse has bolted. So who does that leave? McCullum, Vettori – our last line of defense. Bugger all from them, leaving it up to the tail to save the innings. Pretty long tail too you’d have to say, by our normal standard. Still managed to put on nearly 40 runs though. That’s like a fifth of our total coming from the tail. Puts our specialist batsmen to shame”
“Uh. O-kay…”
“If you would pass my comments on to New Zealand Cricket it would be most appreciated.”
April 12th, 2009 at 1:44 pm
Franklin needs to be cut some slack. It’s been only a short while since he started rebuilding himself as a “batting all-rounder”, and he played two decent, crease occupying innings over the series, and seemed to improve his bowling by the time the third test arrived. He needs to be looked at as a player feeling his way into an unfamiliar role, not someone with eight years of experience to call on.
Having said that, I do have a problem with his selection in the first place. Considering NZ went into this series with one of the most inexperienced top five lineups ever, against the number 2/3 side in the world, what were they thinking by trying to blood Franklin in a new role here? While Franklin may yet be a long term prospect (yes, I am fully aware of the irony in that statement) as a test no.6, this was the wrong series to give him a go. If Jacob Oram had played purely as a batsman he would’ve probably contributed more to the team. So too Grant Elliott, who at least had some one-day form behind him. Given how well Jesse Ryder bowled, I’m not sure the kiwis would have been worse of playing the extra batsman at number six – Aaron Redmond, perhaps, with his legspinners providing extra variety?