Crucket

With Pakistan’s thumping of Sri Lanka in the only 20-20, the Pakistani tour of Sri Lanka is now complete. So hopefully the Sri Lankan attentions will now turn to the New Zealanders. Check out these outlets.

There are three main English dailies in Sri Lanka. They are all wafer thin in print and pretty damn ugly online.

• Daily News: Sports
• Daily Mirror: Sports
• The Island: Sports

I seem to recall a preference for The Island myself when I was in Sri Lanka, but I don’t remember why.

The only decent cricket blog I know of out of Sri Lanka is Fly Slip, who have now noticed that New Zealand is touring and are already offering up a poll on the best excuses for NZ losing the test series.

I’ve come across a fairly weighty site about Sri Lankan cricket, Island Cricket. I don’t really know what it is; I suspect it might be one of the social networking sites, for SL cricket fans.

There are also a couple of forums for SL cricket fans, SLCricket and the Dilmah Cricket Network Forum – my own personal favourite brand for gumboot tea.

Kiwis will never get spin.

You have to love the Otago Daily Times and their eternal optimism. From any number of press-conference sound bites, they chose ‘NZ has talent to win’ from Vettori as their headline.

It’s nice to believe that Vettori has faith in his players, but the quote the ODT article uses is just an empty throw-away platitude. If the Black Caps are going to succeed in Sri Lanka, they are going to have to do it by hard graft and good strategy. I don’t want to run down the ability of our players, but except for a couple of exceptions, natural talent is not our greatest strength. (It is a fair point that lack of experience is one of our weaknesses though.)

In contrast, Sti Lanka is overflowing with naturals. Their batting line up is lead by the eminently talented Sangakarra, currently the number 1 batsmen in test cricket. With him will be Jayawardene, another fine, fine player. The series against Pakistan has also unearthed another natural talent, Angelo Mathews, who scored 191 runs in the test series and bowled a good few overs as well.

I’m not sure where he is injury-wise, but if Muralitharan plays he will of course be the greatest talent on the park. However, the latest bowling wonder in Sri Lanka has been Ajantha Mendis. He’s still finding his feet, but if he is going to break through against any team, it’s likely to be the Black Caps. He gave us a lot of trouble at the World 20-20, the results of which give him a 20-20 bowling average against NZ of 3.

Against this, New Zealand has potential top-20 talent in Taylor and Ryder, McCullum has a gift for the limited-over formats and Vettori carries much of the team’s talent. For the rest of the team though, while there is plenty of ability there in the likes of Guptill and O’Brien just as quick examples, match-winning talent is a bit short at present, if you can see the distinction I am making.

The facts are, Sri Lanka are a better team than us by a long way. If we are going to succeed in this tour, we are going to have to play very well.

The tour to Sri Lanka has already begun: SLC Dev XI 45/2, Tuffy and Martin a wicket each.

It’s been six years since we were last in Sri Lanka for a full tour (full being in this case two tests and a mini ODI triangular).

2003 was quite a successful tour for New Zealand. Both the tests ended in draws, but New Zealand had the better of both. In the first test in Colombo, we managed a first innings total of 515, with Fleming famously scoring 274 (though Sri Lanka then batted through to the 4th day, making a result impossible). In the second at Kandy, New Zealand barely outplayed Sri Lanka, and the biggest victory was forcing Sri Lanka onto the defence, allowing Fleming to crow a bit after the test.

In the triangular ODI series that followed, New Zealand lead the tight points table, then overcame Pakistan in the final.

The ICC have updated their team test rankings, and as I expected New Zealand has gone up a rank from 8 to 7 thanks to the Windies losing against Bangladesh and that being thanks to a contract dispute stripping the Windies of their front line players.

(I was going to make this post yesterday based on the July ranking, which according to the 2009 archives actually showed that New Zealand’s rating had fallen from 82 points in May (don’t know what happened to June) to 78, despite not having played test cricket for months. The ICC updates their table every year at about this time, dropping off old results, which would explain this change. It’s good I waited for a day and managed to catch the update, as our rating has inexplicably jumped back up to 82 in August, again with no cricket played. I don’t know what the ICC are up to with their ratings as they don’t explain them to us any more.)

But anyway, leaving aside West Indies misfortune, we have a rating of 82 and we have upcoming test series against teams with ratings of 119 (Sri Lanka), 84 (Pakistan), 13 (Bangladesh) and 124 (Australia), spanning the whole spectrum of the rankings as they stand at the moment.

We don’t have any official word yet on the schedule for the Australian tour here at the end of the home season. However, reports are that there will be only two tests and that the tour will wrap up on 31 March, with the last match being the second test at Hamilton.

That the marquee tour of the summer will only have two tests is very disappointing. However, it seems that NZC just haven’t been given enough time by Cricket Australia to fit in a decent tour. Australia won’t be free from their home commitments against Pakistan and the West Indies until after 23 Feb. A realistic end to the tour would be the first week of April. However, Australian workload restrictions are a further bind and pretty much rule out the possibility of three tests. Cricket Australia require 10 days between the start of the second and third tests of a tour. This would have meant that with the second test ending on 31 March, any third test would not have been able start until about 6 April. In fact it’s hard to see how we’re going to fit in a good 5-ODI series in there as well.

A quick squiz at the Aussie home schedule shows that the reason they won’t make it to New Zealand until late is because they have two 3-test series (both with the luxurious breaks between the second and third tests) and two 5-ODI series scheduled against Pakistan and the West Indies. That’s some workload. Over the same time period, New Zealand will play a 2-test series and an ODI series against Bangladesh.

Ironically we have to squeeze our 3-test series against Pakistan around the Aussie home schedule.

A very interesting aspect of the Aussie schedule is that the Windies have a huge month and a half break between their test and ODI rubbers and apparently have no other international commitments in between. I wonder if anyone has given any though to inviting them to visit for some ODIs in January.

So the little contract scare with the IPL players is history. They all signed their contracts and everything is as it should be.

I still have a few things to say about this issue, however, that I didn’t get to when the issue was still warm.

Firstly, let me point you to a post on Paul Holden’s Sideline Slogger. Holden takes issue with Jonathon Millmow’s  article that I linked to in my previous post. To oversimplify the positions of these two commentators, Millmow  thinks the IPL players are abandoning loyalty for their country for money and Holden thinks that sport is just a job.

Millmow is wrong. All the players signed their NZ Cricket contracts. Not one of them chose money over country.

But Holden is wrong too. Cricket is not just a job. If it was, then none of them would have signed their NZC contracts.

But even if it was just a job, we don’t have to just accept that players choosing to play IPL rather than international cricket is likely to become the way of things. Anyone in New Zealand who is more interested in test cricket than domestic Indian 20-20 can feel rightly pissed that money is threatening to drag players away, and we have a right to express that opinion. And we don’t have to respect the players for putting so much stake in their IPL salaries, particularly after they pocketed their full salaries for playing in last year’s tournament.

Obviously the players have the right to go play the IPL if they want to. We can’t stop them. But we don’t have to like it and we shouldn’t be expected to send these guys off with a friendly slap on the back. You are allowed to be disappointed in people who change jobs or take job opportunities when you want them to stay in their old jobs.

There is far too much respect given to money in this age and too much respect given to people who have it. And I’m offended by the suggestions that we should respect these players because of the huge amounts of money they have turned down, as if the contact with these enormous sums of money makes them better people.

Let me make it clear however that I am not complaining about the players. I respect highly that they chose to sign their NZC contracts and to make playing for New Zealand their priority. I don’t respect particularly that they agonised over the money, but they signed their contracts so I can’t fault them.

Now compare the players and their choice to forego the IPL cash with Bill English and his choice to rort the MP allowances scheme. (It is an extremely tenuous comparison I know, but it was English and his greed that got me angry with people with loads of money who want loads more of it and got me writing this post today. Even if the comparison is tenuous, both cases are about money and choices, with the cricket players making the right choice and English making the wrong choice.) Now think of how much you disrespect Bill English for his choice, even though he hasn’t broken any rules. How would you really feel if the players had chosen the money?