Crucket

While writing a little piece for the Herald, Mark Richardson found a phrase he really liked: “playing your boss at golf”. His point in this article was that while we can prepare wickets here in New Zealand that would gift us easy victories, if we want to be invited to play with India again, we have to prepare pitches that will give us close fought victories so that the Indians think they had a chance against us – just like if you were playing your boss at golf. (Though really, he just had a phrase he wanted to use and needed some context for it.)

He liked his little phrase so much that he used it again in an article for Cricinfo. But this time he overcooked his metaphor. In case we weren’t going to get it, he spells out that “New Zealanders and New Zealand cricket understand who pays the wages nowadays”. What seemed a bit cheeky in the Herald, became petulant and accusatory on Cricinfo.

And it ignited a firestorm in the comments, with rising anger towards Richardson, then tempered with some crowing about the strength of India’s new-ball attack and new-found likeness for pacey conditions, followed by some defences of Mark before degenerating into sniping amongst the commentors, with the thread culminating in what appears to be an Indian delighting in the Indian loss in the first 20-20 as it proves Richardson wrong.

Cheap Opening Shot Mr Richardson!

Oh this is a new low. The pre-emptive-whine strike – “We lost because India will not come back if we beat them”.

Wow! Shocking article. If I understand it correctly, Mr. Richardson is saying the following: NZ can beat any side in the world if it so chooses but since it is a poor cricketing nation, it has to kowtow to the countries that have money.

It is good to read your comments Mark, but pray tell me what is your achievement in cricket field. Have you done anything in any of the sub continent countries. How many centuries have you scored?

I can tell you what is brown, dry and steaming: Mark’s article.

I personally as an ardent Indian fan am PRAYING that NZC dish out greener tracks than in 2003. Regardless of the batting strength India are bringing with them, the bowling attack in India is unimaginably better than the last one which arrived in NZ.

Hilarious. Loving this. the so called slightest slight regarding indian cricket and all the trolls come out. Lets ignore the fact that most of what Richardson said was true.

The Indian reaction to this article is just bizarre – I am Australian, and I think Mark Richardson is spot-on. He points out that India are much stronger than NZ in most conditions (obvious), and that NZ’s best chance would lie in greentops a la 2002-03 (also true). Yes, India have Zaheer and Ishant this time, but can they use the conditions as well as the NZ guys who have grown up in them? Maybe, maybe not – but we won’t find out this time! NZ will prepare wickets India considers “fair”, no matter what disadvantage to NZ, because NZ Cricket knows it can’t afford another 6-7 year gap before India returns again. (They know that India would have returned much sooner than this had they experienced good batting wickets last time, rather than embarrassment!) Nowhere does he suggest match-fixing or anything like it. His only criticism of India is that its famed top six was outshone by their NZ counterparts on green pitches last time, which is a fair and accurate assessment.

Your so called boss actually lost in first T20 and proved the backbne of your theory completely wrong. Uhh.. I will pray for you Mark, so Boss can win the second T20 and you can save your face..hehehehehe

Best finish to a 20-20 that I’ve ever come across. Amazing last two overs: a wickets, 23 runs, a near walk-off, winning run scored off a dropped catch.

And frankly, after the shenanigans of their administrators today, it is only fair that India get beaten. (Eat a bag of dicks, BCCI!)

Old Crow Medicine Show (playing NZ next month; anyone going?):

Game 1:

1.2 I Sharma to Guptill, no run, stunning ball from Ishant, jagged back viciously from outside off, Guptill bravely decides to not offer a shot is struck outside off, but that was going on to hit the stumps, Guptill is a very luck man to still be there, Ishant can’t believe it

Game 2:

8.5 Harbhajan Singh to Guptill, OUT, very bizarre decision! Guptill aims to pull a short delivery and gets a thick inside edge onto his thigh, the Indians appeal and the inside edge was obvious to the naked eye, umpire Gary Baxter doesn’t appear as if if he’s going to give it out and then all of a sudden raises the finger, Guptill doesn’t want to go and McCullum can’t believe it either

A nice start to the tour, NZ beat India by 7 wickets in the first 20-20, and already Suhas’ quite reasonable predictions are off (he predicted a 0-2 NZ loss in the 20-20s).

I missed the game, but the scoreboard seems to show that we achieved the win with the same kind of single-minded efficiency that we bring to our ODIs. After about the 6th over, we never seemed to be more than 1 rpo off the pace.

Looking at the Indian scoreboard however really reveals the important factor in India’s inability to post a score to challenge New Zealand – cheap wickets. Gambhir, Sharma, Singh and Dhoni all went cheaply, getting 16 runs between them but using up 23 balls, a run rate less than half the overall rate – so that’s nearly 20 lost runs.

CSS:

So India come to New Zealand even stronger than last time. All the talk is of them nabbing the no. 1 spot in the near future. And we’re well aware of where we sit in the rankings. However, the Indians have been notably short in bluster in the lead up the series. All the talk has been coming from Andy Moles. A tour of New Zealand is just the sort of experience that can bring a team back down to Earth. And the Indians are well aware of that and are perhaps even – could I be right in saying – a little scared.

Regardless of how the pitches are prepared, conditions in New Zealand will not favour India. This will go some way towards evening the odds. Suhas has made predictions for the results in the various rubbers. He’s probably got them all right. I am hoping that we can steal a test, but I’m not sticking my neck out and predicting that.

Players to watch

Martin Guptill/Tim McIntosh: I’m making a bold prediction of our test openers here, but both these players have impressed earlier in the season. What sort of a difference will it make to our test performances if we could build some decent opening partnerships?
Chris Martin/Kyle Mill/Mark Gillespie: If we have exciting promise at the top of our batting line up, our opening bowling spot is practically non-existent. A serious problem.

Ishant Sharma: He’s still learning the game really, but even his natural ability – and his height (1.95 m) – could make him devastating in bowler friendly conditions.
Virender Sehwag: Has been down in form over the past couple of years but has been keeping in touch with some massive scores. Averages 27 against New Zealand, so needs a lot of runs to fix that.

India are finally back to play cricket on our pitches. It was 02/03 when they were last here. Everyone else has toured in that time, except Zimbabwe. They’ve been a long time away from New Zealand shores. They were supposed to tour in 2007 but, well, they didn’t come.

There have been comings and goings in both teams since then, to say the least. By my reckoning, only two current New Zealand selections have any experience playing tests against India, Vettori and Oram. And the Indian team likewise is largely changed.

A significant change for both teams since the 02/03 series and the return series in 03/04 is that we have both moved on from epochal captains. Those series both occurred at the peaks of the careers of both Fleming and Ganguly. This season’s series will be a contest between the new generation captains Vettori and Dhoni.

Ganguly was India’s most successful captain by a big margin. He was an inspiration. I was in India for a year during his reign and it really felt that for once hero worship and fair analysis had got it right in believing that Ganguly (along with John Wright) was the driving force behind India’s continued success. Of course, he had his quirks. Sportsfreak has a good summary of Ganguly’s snooty antics, which goes a long way towards explaining why JRod calls him a giant alien lizard freak. Flintoff described playing with him at Lancashire: “It’s a struggle with him. He wasn’t interested in the other players and it became a situation where it was 10 players and Ganguly. He turned up as if he was royalty – it was like having Prince Charles on your side.”

Dhoni is a real contrast with Ganguly, with his Bollywood good looks, comparatively humble background and Sehwagian approach to batting. He is a captain for his time like no other captain has been at any other time. He is also, 5 tests into his career, many times more successful than Ganguly. He has captained 4 wins from 5 tests.