Crucket

* 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.”

The Indian Series: Myth or Fact?

It would be a damn shame if rain were to disrupt the final test, though NZ needs all the help they can get. We’re only a couple wickets away from our rather long tail (though Southee can give the tail a violent wag)

Based on the 3-day forecast, play should start on time. However, we should be getting a mm or two some time during the second session. That might only be a bit of drizzle. The real rain shouldn’t be appearing until well after the scheduled end.

So it is not an escape that we can rely on. There’ll be nothing for it but to bat out the 80 or so overs that light should allow.

New Zealand’s run chase is now 5 balls old. Looking good. Playing safe. Not many runs though.

So the target is 617, with 5 1/2 sessions to play. Ignoring rain as a factor, as it is too random, the big question remaining in this game is what will the margin of defeat be. And, ignoring everything that has gone over the past three days, what would be a non-embarrassing effort by the Black Caps in this innings.

Ideally I’d like to see Guptill and McIntosh chase down this target before the end of play today. Realistically ideally, I’d like to see a repeat of the heroics against England in the last home test last year, where we scored 431 chasing 550 or so, even if it involves an unbelievable 77 odd from Southee – in fact, especially if. So maybe 450 is the absolute most I could ask for, a margin of less than 200. Realistically and just realistically, I’d like them simply to demonstrate that the first innings collapse was an aberration. Just a decent score on a decent pitch, given that it is late in the test. Something north of 300.

This is now the last chance for several of our batsmen to redeem some fairly middling efforts in the series. Ryder, Taylor, McCullum and Vettori have all acquited themselves very well overall. Guptill, McIntosh, Flynn and Franklin not so much. I would say that a decent series haul would be 200 runs over the 5 innings we have had. To get to that target, we’re looking at 113 or more Guptill, 144 for McIntosh, 91 from Flynn (given that he missed the 2nd test) and 119 from Franklin. Heh. 467 between them. How’s that for high expectations.

The biggest day in my cricket season, day two of the 3rd test, the day I spent at the Basin Reserve watching live cricket, and it was arse! The Black Caps played meekly and failed meekly. They were dismissed for 197, crawling along at 3 runs an over. Worst day’s cricket all season.

It is hard work spending a day on the bank at the Basin on a typical Wellington day. The incessant wind evaporates your strength. The sun won’t stay out from behind the clouds for long enough to keep you warm, but is bright enough to give you a headache from the glare. Your legs and buttocks ache from stopping you slipping down onto the people sitting below.

But when the game is on in town, where would you be but at the ground? To hear the ball hit the bat, to see the game unfold, to watch in person the players you’ve been following since the first game of the tour.

Here are the Black Caps arriving, looking confident with just one wicket to take:

Then once they started batting, they initially showed the required application:

While we enjoyed the atmosphere of the bank and the appropriate culinary delights:

But then the Indian bowlers started to exert themselves. Not this chap so much:

Though he did give us a few demonstrations of the poise that makes him such an exciting prospect:

Instead it was the guy at the other end, Zaheer Khan with 5/65 (click on the photo and wait a bit):

Then the fans started to flock to their heros:

And cheered them on from the crowd:

By the time they returned to the field for the third session, the writing was on the wall, and it read 140/7:

Another day of drama witnessed (largely) from the bank at the Basin Reserve under Mt Victoria:

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.

(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):