Crucket

Everyone’s favourite cricket blog (don’t believe me? check here), Cricket with Balls, is now in print. Jrod has compiled the best, least topical, posts from his blog into a book – The Year of the Balls 2008: A Cricket Disrespective – and offered it for sale, about NZ$20 plus postage. (You can also pay $5 or so to download it, so you can read it on your computer…except you can already…well, go figure.)

It should be a great read, with some great stuff about kiwis in there – notably Jesse Ryder and the cult that has grown up around him.

In fact, you’ve probably heard about the book from other sites. It’s been getting quite a bit of coverage around the cricket blogosphere, where it has been described as the first cricket book written by a cricket blogger. I might just quickly point out, without taking anything away from Jrod, that this isn’t really true. I couldn’t say for sure which cricket blogger wrote the first cricket book, but Not Out! No Ball! Over! by The Bearded Inswinger Jack Perkins of Cricket Mystery was published earlier this year, with a fraction above zero publicity. (The title by the way is explained in this post.)

According to independent research, interest in cricket in New Zealand has surged. There are now more people playing cricket in NZ – 104,000 registered players – and the last season saw record attendances at international matches and television viewerage.

This is rather surprising to me considering we had our worst season in terms of performances for years – the first time we haven’t won at least one home test since 95/96. There must have been something happening this summer that turned the public on. NZCricket reckons it was the two colourful touring teams. I note though that another notable event of the 08/09 season was the birth of Crucket (b. 6 Dec. 08).

Ever wanted to throw a tomato at Lalit Modi? Of course you have. I have, many times. A good, juicy, over-ripe one right in the nose for splitting cricket and getting so many good New Zealand players banned. But even this morning I was tensing my tomato-throwing arm when I read that the ICC had to deny his claims that his Champions 20-20 League had been added to the Future Tours Programme. Who does he think he is?

And I wouldn’t be the first – 2379 tomatoes have already been thrown at him. (I should say though that I am also inclined to give him some applause for creating the IPL and for the Herculean feat of ensuring it ran this year.)

This Connect site, where people are throwing tomatoes and bursting into applause, looks like it might contain countless buried treasures. A quick browse shows that Harbhajan Singh and Shanthakumaran Sreesanth are in a duel for tomatoes (with 484 and 472, respectively). However, Saurav Ganguly is in a league of his own with 7165.

It’s hard to think who is most tomato worthy in the New Zealand team. Ross Taylor maybe for not valuing his wicket more highly. Jacob Oram for all his whining recently. Jesse Ryder for trying to piss his career away. Brendon McCullum for being too big for his boots. Worthiness is not of great importance here though; since it is an Indian site, the most important thing is visibility, and with his gold helmet glinting at the beginning of every Kolkata innings, no New Zealand player is more visible than Brendon McCullum. And therefore McCullum leads the other New Zealanders in pretty much every category, with 1262 tomatoes thrown at him, 3618 roses handed to him, 518 pairs of hand ringing out applause and 3 songs dedicated to him. And then there are the comments: “God’s miracle”, “hearthrob”, “he is best”, “hats off”, “fan!”, “you bloody ghorey” (that last by the way is not so complementary).

Cricinfo has been a bit faster in reporting on New Zealand’s second warm up match, against Ireland. Another win, blessedly, and much more convincing than the last-ball win against Bangladesh. A 7-wicket win with 3 overs to spare.

Taylor’s 74 off 36 was the stand out performance, of course. He’s developing a knack of hitting massive scores very fast; his 81* off 33 (along with Gilchrist’s 85 off 35) is quite conspicuous in the list of IPL high-SR knocks, amongst several relatively middling scores. However, Ryder’s 3/4 off 4, including 2 wickets off 2 balls, tore the Irish innings apart.

Dimmer:

I’m not getting any results through the main channels, Cricinfo (Scorecard not yet available) or blackcaps.co.nz, but the news is coming in that New Zealand has beaten Bangladesh in their first warm up for the ICC World 20-20.

It seems that the game was an “unofficial” warm up, which pushes it right down the hierarchy. Still, the Bangladeshi fans were quite excited about the match as the last time they played an unofficial warm up against New Zealand was for the last 50-over world cup, in which they beat New Zealand and then went on and tore up their opponents in the official games. Many of the Bangladeshi fans on-line seem to be in England and thus someone was able to provide an almost ball-by-ball coverage on the BanglaCricket forum.

There is no proper scorecard as yet, though I have deduced the following highlights:

Bangladesh: 146/6, 20 overs
Shakib: 35
Riyad: 43

New Zealand: 147/6?, 20 overs – 2 runs scored off a misfield on the last ball
Guptill: 61 (at a good rate apparently)
McGlashan: 35

Here is an account of the match from an observer:

Bangladesh started very well aparently Tamim was on fire right from the word go according to Rabeed bhai. Zunaed is out of form full stop, he needs click soon as Tamim cant carry the opening partnership all the time

Next came Ash who after playing himself in hit beautiful six then gets out in the same over and if I am not mistaken the very next ball. Sakib was not out and joined by Mahmudullah Riyad. And from the very begining he started to middle the ball sweetly . Him and Sakib had good partnership and at onestage he out scored Sakib. Sakib then tried to accelerate the innings and after hitting a boundary was caught at long on by a Kiwi fielder who barely picked it up in front of him, it was a good catch. Mushy then came and gone before I could count the number of sheeps on the far side of the ground. Mahmudullah then top edged the ball , he was unlucky not to get a fifty. Well done to him. Hard work that he put in during picnic cricket last year is paying dividends. Mash was not as explosive as we know him he did not try to through kitchen sinks like he normaly do. He played more controlled shot. Naeem had only few balls to face he hit one good six. New Zealand really bowled tight at the end of the innings other wise score would have reached beyond 155+.

New Zealand innings: In came Gupthill and started hitting one six per over, when the score was 50 I think Gupthill already had 40 odd runs. It was Ash who changed the course of the game ater coming to bowl the 8th over (or was it 9th) of the match. He started with a wide but managed to get Broom out LBW. Styris then was briliantly ran out I was so excited I did not even saw who the fielder was. New zealand then went past 100 run on or around 13 over mark with the loss of 2 wicket. I was already giving up hope and thought the game would be over by 17 or 18 over mark. 2 more wicket fell in the quick succession. it was 111/4 then came Naeem to bowl the 17 th over and his first ball was wide which went for 4. His over cost 13/14 runs. I think that was when we gave the game back to kiwis.
Rasel bowled well for last over apart from that 6 of the 3rd ball. Last ball 2 run needed. Mash slipped while fielding what would have been 1 run became 2.

So, a first-up unofficial warm-up last-ball win. Jolly good.

Elvis Costello:

Next on the list: 20 players to contract

Jrod’s Celebrity Interview

So now that the IPL is over and the best 20-20 team has been found (congratulations Deccan Chargers), the rest of the world will play a little tournament, about half as big as the IPL and largely featuring players not good enough to be considered for any IPL team. It should be a bit of a lark. And it starts quite soon – the first match is Friday of next week. However, there are also a whole bunch of warm up matches, starting tomorrow in fact, against Bangladesh.

I have added the Black Caps’ schedule for the ICC World 20-20 in my Schedule section. It’s impossible to know who we’ll be playing after the first round, so I have listed our second round matches in parentheses with all our possible opponents listed. I’ll update it as the tournament progresses.

My expectation is that we’ll get knocked out in the semis, because we almost always seem to get that far. This expectation is not based on current form or our preparations however. As my previous post shows, our star players are not at their best. Our coach is getting tips from one of cricket’s loopiest coaches, John Buchanan. And the team is spending their preparations faffing about on a country estate (admittedly with a cricket pitch modelled on The Oval).

When I first took a look at how the New Zealanders were doing in the IPL, I found that most of them needed to lift their game if they were to make an impact, or their franchises had to give them more of a run.

How much have things changed over the second half of the IPL?

Kyle Mills – Mumbai Indians

Not given a single game for the team who ended up second from the bottom. Probably already left South Africa to join the NZ 20-20 squad.

Scott Styris – Deccan Chargers

Didn’t add to the two games he had played when I last reported. Piggy’s descent into obscurity continues.

Ross Taylor – Royal Challengers Bangalore

Had a slow start to the tournament, but really accelerated in the second half. Ended up second highest run scorer for Bangalore with 236 runs averaging about 30 at 134, particularly helped out by his 81* of 33. Not bad in the end, and possibly winding up for a good knock in the semis.

Jesse Ryder – Royal Challengers Bangalore

Pretty much dropped by Bangalore after a poor first half of the tournament. I think he played one game in the second half, where he scored 22, which actually pushed his average into double figures.

Jacob Oram – Chennai Super Kings

Continued on as he started; hit a few runs when he got a bat and knocked over a couple more wickets in the second half of the tourney. A most middling of middling performances. He sits a bit below half way down in both the batting averages and bowling averages.

Daniel Vettori – Delhi Daredevils

Despite having a tidy first half to the competition, Vettori has only been given two games in the second half. Fairly perhaps as he has taken no more wickets and only picked up a handful of runs. Delhi go into the semis as top qualifier, so they are likely to be happy with their winning lineup, which doesn’t include Vettori.

Brendon McCullum – Kolkata Knight Riders

One of the more abject performers of the first half, in both his batting and his captaining. He managed a couple of wins in the second half, but combined with another 5 losses. His batting improved considerably, including an 84 and a 81*, which gives him two entries in the top 10 high scores for all teams. These scores did enough to push his average and strike rate to 24 and 120 and out of the embarrasing zone.

So, with the semis and final still to be played, it has been a rather quiet tournament for the New Zealanders. Taylor has been the stand out, and he hasn’t even been playing to his usual standard. Really rather quiet.