Wouldn’t it be most fair for umpires to tend towards giving greater benefit of the doubt to a struggling team? I think it would, though I suspect in reality the opposite tends to happen. I mean, the Aussies never frickin’ seem to have their appeals turned down.
It is frankly inconceivable that Tendulkar’s catch off McIntosh was given without consultation with the third umpire after the precedent with Ryder’s catch off Dhoni (for which the on-field umpires conferred and consulted with the third umpire before giving it not-out). Both catches were equally dubious and the umpires should have treated them the same.
But what can you do but grumble. If the referral system was in place, nothing would have changed. Even though Tendulkar’s catch was equivalent to Ryder’s, if it had been referred by McIntosh, the third umpire wouldn’t have changed the on-field umpire’s call. It would be easier in a way however to be able to complain about been done in by “the system” than to feel hard done by inconsistent umpiring.
It is important in sport to be realistic about what is likely to not go your way; so e.g. when one of the top 6 scores heavily against you, you don’t despondent, you just factor it in. Just because Tendulkar scores 160, you shouldn’t then let your shoulders droop and allow the tail to score 80-odd.
This applies not just within a match, but also to bigger pictures. Currently, the Black Caps are 166 runs behind with 7 wickets in hand. Pretty discouraging for the first match in the series. However, if you recall that we generally lose a match by an innings in every series, things don’t look any worse than usual. We’re not really doing that bad.
Day 1 was so bizarre, two collapses and a record-breaking partnership, that I wanted to see how the innings would look if we could view it as a whole. So I graphed it. This is what a partnership that makes up 2/3 of an innings looks like:
And for comparison, here is the – considerably less dramatic – as yet incomplete – Indian innings:
Pity the Indian fan who, getting out of bed at a fashionable hour of say 7am Indian Standard Time, is likely find, at the current rate, that a quarter of the test has already gone.
In the middle of the ODI series, where Indian were flaying the Black Caps, Stuff were exclaiming that Vettori was holding onto his no. 1 ranking. Not likely. By the time that article saw print Vettori had already dropped to 2nd, as the recently updated rankings now show. Vettori has now in fact dropped to 5th, after going wicketless in Auckland.
Kyle Mills managed to hold onto this spot at 3, thanks to his 1/27 in Auckland. Jacob Oram dwindled a bit, dropping from 14 before the series to 19 afterwards. Patel and Southee also slipped, while O’Brien, Ryder, Elliott and Butler don’t even make it into the top 100 (they are, respectively, 118, 137, 131 and 127).
Somehow I expected things to be worse for our bowlers.
Amongst the batsmen, Ryder reached a career high of 47, which is quite impressive considering he was ranked 77 before the series. Guptill was similarly successful; starting the tour at 72 and reaching 44 by the end.
Our highest ranked batsmen remains Taylor, who has slipped out of the top 20 over the series to sit at 23. McCullum is also in the 20s, at 27, where he started the series. Styris drops into the 30s, despite not getting a bat in his one game, though that will include some degradation from missing the Chappell–Hadlee. Oram’s 8 runs in 3 innings pushes him into the 40s.
Elliott dipped slightly from 57 to 60, though that could have been as bad as 65 if it wasn’t for his furious cameo in Hamilton. Neil Broom just squeezes into the top 200. Kyle Mills didn’t improve his batting ranking much, though he finishes at 19 as an all-rounder. The biggest mover of all was Peter McGlashan,whose late innings heroics in Hamilton boosted his ranking from 329 to 235.
A most consoling of consolation wins. NZ defeat India by 8 wickets with 118 balls remaining. Not just a win, but a thumping. A dramatic turn around. It is in keeping with this series that the game should firstly be rain affected and secondly be so one-way.
The first three completed matches were determined by India’s strength, a powerhouse batting line up that can put any game beyond reach. Whereas tonight’s match showcased New Zealand’s strengths, difficult bowlers who can keep the score down and competent batsmen who can chase down almost any total.
It was a frustrating series, with all the rain, but an exhilerating series, with over 2000 runs scored at about 6.5 an over. There were some amazing performances. Sehwag was a sensation of course, in his most devastating series performance to date. 299 runs, 74.75 average, 150.25 strike rate. Tendulkar was masterful too, with the highest score of the series of 163. Ryder also with his 224 runs at 56.25 by 106.63 deserves to be lauded.
Back in high school, my mate and I found a copy of Card Cricket amongst the school’s educational board games. So we wasted a few rainy lunch hours simulating tests between his World XI and my NZ XI. I was as good at cards as I was at real cricket, so things generally didn’t go well for the NZ XI. One day however, Viv Richards really let loose on me. He piled up a century and marched towards his double. I just could not get him out, no matter what I threw down. It was bloody frustrating. I suspect though that the problem was that I simply didn’t have the combinations left in my hand to get a wicket. Play my cards as I might, the game had broken to my detriment.
It has occurred to me on occasion that the game of cricket is played well within it’s ultimate limits. In ODIs, batsmen score about 6 runs an over. However, they could be scoring at 6 times that. There is a lot of scope there.
In recent years, batting has improved considerably. Averages and strike rates have risen. In previous decades there have been only 1, 2 or no players with strike rates over 100, all of them late-innings sloggers. In the 00s we have 5, including actual batsmen. Might there come a point along this curve of improvement when a batsman starts to dominate bowlers to such an extent that they become completely ineffectual? When the batsman can score off every ball and only has to worry about getting himself out. The whole game, which is based on some sort of balance between bat and ball, would break down.
The first reports of the latest dastardly move by the BCCI took the line that the IPL sponsor Sony weren’t happy with McMillan commentating on Sky on the current Indian series because of his involvment with the ICL. No real evidence for this claim was put forward apart from the fact that Ravi Shastri, who has been commentating on the ODIs, suggested it might be a problem. And no indication that the BCCI are involved.
It seems incredible that this infantile feud should spread to the commentary box, but enough insanity has been perpetuated in the pursuit of exiling the ICL that it didn’t seem impossible.
The development of the story, reported later today, is that the BCCI themselves are involved and that they are requesting that NZC stand McMillan down.
There has to come a point when this insanity will bite the BCCI on the arse. How embarrased would the BCCI be if McMillan does get to publically talk about the Indian team? I’m pretty sure that Macca won’t get his chance to commentate. But there are some barriers for the BCCI getting their way. Firstly, they can’t tell NZC to get McMillan off the Sky commentary team. Surely. What influence does NZC have over Sky? And what right would they have to use any influence? Secondly, Sky and Sony may have a bit more business sense than to allow themselves to get themselves involved in feuds between sporting organisations. Maybe one of them can knock some sense into the BCCI.
Does Radio Sport get anything from Sony? Perhaps McMillan could get a gig there.
10 wickets is as bad a loss as you can suffer when you are defending in an ODI, but that doesn’t begin to describe yesterday’s mauling. After all, if the rain hadn’t intervened, India may have lost a wicket or two chasing down the full total, and the official margin of victory would have been even less representative. I see that India were 84 runs in excess of their D-L target when the game was called off.
As meaningless as the exercise is, it is rather mindboggling to compare India’s innings last night with their innings at Christchurch, where they scored the highest ODI total ever scored in New Zealand. After 23.3 overs, from which they scored 201 yesterday, in Christchurch they were 139/2. If last night’s innings had been allowed to unfold to as it had in Christchurch, they would have scored well in exces of 500 over 50 overs.
As I say, a meaningless exercise (try extrapolating NZ’s innings in this game over 50 overs), but it does make you wonder just what this Indian team is ultimately capable of.
Yesterday I saw the work of a master, which first appeared in the 80s, but has been updated to the new millennium. While a handful of gifted costumed champions were featured, one stood apart from the others – a blue god, indomitable, possessing abilities beyond those of common men, an unnatural vision of what’s coming and an inhuman calm. It was several hours of sustained, often brutal, action and spectacle…though the ending was a bit disappointing.
