Crucket

If you have been checking my schedule page, you’ll see that this month we were supposed to be playing Zimbabwe. That tour has been postponed for a year, so I’ve tentatively pencilled it in for July 2010.

I’m a big believer in cutting sporting ties with wayward countries, certainly when that country is subject to international sanctions. So I’m pleased that we aren’t currently touring Zimbabwe.

However, around about the time the postponement of the tour was decided, the major political parties of Zimbabwe negotiated a power-sharing agreement, the first weakening of the despotic grip that Robert Mugabe held over Zimbabwe. This caused me a slight amount of doubt about whether the sporting boycott was now justified – whether this green shoot of real democracy in Zimbabwe shouldn’t be nurtured. Of course, the power-sharing agreement isn’t of any importance alone; what is important is that it leads to freedom for Zimbabwe.

I wanted to know where Zimbabwe was now, five months after the postponement of the tour was announced. Has the power-sharing agreement helped Zimbabwe? Is the sporting boycott justified? It appears that in many, many important ways, things have not improved in Zimbabwe. While some things have improved with Morgan Tsvangirai as prime minister (the hyper-inflation is under control), Mugabe is still largely in control of the country and still running it like his personal fiefdom; he controls the army, the police (which continues to arrest Mugabe’s political opponents and human-rights campaigners on trumped-up charges), the courts, the intelligence service and the media (which he uses to attack Tsvangirai). Clearly the boycott is still relevant, and could well still be in a years time when the postponed tour is supposed to go ahead.

Up until the real battle for the semi final spots started, everyone’s darling at the World 20-20 was Ireland.

Ireland had managed to qualify for the super 8s, while certain test-playing nations failed to, to wit Australia and Bangladesh. This certainly proved that they are the strongest associate nation (non-test-playing nation). While it should be noted that they qualified thanks to a win over Bangladesh, that’s an achievement we are unlikely to see any other associate manage, especially now that Kenya has fallen away.

It has been that way for a while however. Compared to the other associate nations, Ireland are in their own league. They completely dominated the recent 2009 World Cup Qualifier (thus topping the World Cricket League) and they have won the Intercontinental Cup every year since 2005. They also have full ODI status and actually have some points in the rankings.

However, having made the super 8s, they were then soundly beaten by New Zealand and Pakistan and beaten by Sri Lanka. They had three opportunities to pick up super 8 points, but ended their tournament with only a win over Bangladesh from the qualifying round. Consider how disappointing New Zealand’s tournament was, with wins over only Scotland and Ireland, though NZ made Ireland look pretty damn poor when they played each other.

If Ireland, the top associate nation, went home from the World 20-20 happy with their performance whereas NZ, a very lowly ranked test-playing nation, went home disappointed despite having outperformed Ireland, you get some idea of the gulf between the associate and test-playing nations.

That gulf is well known, however.

Now, according to the future tours programme, NZ is currently scheduled to play Zimbabwe. That tour is not going ahead, essentially because of political differences between NZ and Zimbabwe. This leaves the NZ players doing nothing. This is a genuine window in NZ’s fixtures. Was any thought given to scheduling a small tour of Ireland during this window? The NZ players were already in the northern hemisphere. It is true that Ireland is now involved in the Intercontinental Cup, but this window opened months ago, leaving time for arrangements to be made if there was the will.

Ireland needs to be better rewarded for its achievements against the associates and needs more matches against higher ranked teams if they are going to progress further. I think with NZ’s regular winter window, we are in a unique position to help Ireland out every now and then. I know we did the same for Zimbabwe way back when (maybe only once, but I do remember Jeff Crowe leading a whistle stop tour there), which might have done much to lead them towards test status.

A comment in an earlier post called me on my claim that the Black Caps is the best little cricket team in the world. So I guess I’d better back myself up.

I have to warn you that the rest of this post will be self-serving to the extreme. Embarrassingly so. Non-NZ fans should read no further. And if you do read on, be quite aware that I’m not taking this seriously.

So New Zealand is strictly better than a couple of teams, namely Zimbabwe and Bangladesh. That’s nothing to crow about, but let’s just remove them from the coming discussion.

If size is not accounted for, there are several teams with better records than New Zealand. Seven in fact. However, in determining the best little cricket team, size is of course a factor.

Wikipedia reckons there are 100,000 registered cricket players in New Zealand, whereas there are 500,000 in each of Australia and England. However, according to Giles Clarke from the ECB, there are 1 million women playing cricket in England and 2.5 million men and boys. I can well imagine there are less than a million men or women in New Zealand who even follow cricket, let alone play. We can safely assume that cricket in England and Australia dwarfs the cricket community in New Zealand.

I am going to simply take for granted that the same can be said for cricket in Pakistan and India. With populations that exceed that of New Zealand by factors of 40 and 290, respectively, even minor sports in the Subcontinent are going to be larger than New Zealand cricket.

For Sri Lanka, however, I am going to prove my point. Sri Lanka is many times larger than New Zealand and my gut feeling is that cricket is more popular in Sri Lanka than it is in New Zealand. However, I don’t know how many people play cricket in Sri Lanka, so I can only guess whether it is larger than the 100,000 that play in New Zealand. Instead I am going to look at our respective first class competitions. New Zealand has 6 provincial first class teams that contest the State Championship. (And it can possibly be argued that is too many for the player base.) In Sri Lanka, the first class competition is the Premier Trophy. There are so many teams competing in this tournament that it has to be split into two tiers, with 11 teams in tier A and 10 in tier B. By this measure, cricket in Sri Lanka is considerably larger than cricket in New Zealand.

The next team I will consider is the West Indies. While you might imagine that the West Indies, consisting as it does of several scattered dots on the map and a chunk of South American mainland rainforest, would be pretty small. Montserrat for example has a population of 6000 and an area of 100 sq. km, not  much bigger than Wellington Harbour (89 sq. km). But then again, Jamaica alone has a population of nearly 3 million. Turning to the domestic first-class competition, the Regional Four Day Competition (no sponsor it would seem; pity it’s not called the Busta Cup anymore), there are only 7 teams playing, comparable in that respect to the 6 that play in New Zealand. The teams are Barbados, Combined Campuses and Colleges, Guyana, Jamaica, Leeward Islands, Trinidad and Tobago, and Windward Islands. But this can’t reasonably compared to the New Zealand cricket scene. The State Championship is a proper regional competition; the Regional Four Day Competition isn’t a competition between regional teams, it is an international competition, played between countries or collections of countries – the Leeward Islands cricket team can call on players from 7 different countries or dependencies.

Lastly then is South Africa. The Republic is also considerably larger than New Zealand in term of population. (Face it, New Zealand is the smallest ICC full member, and is in fact smaller than most associate members.) However, I understand that support for sport in South Africa is divided along ethnic lines, with for example soccer being the most popular sport amongst the black community. So I couldn’t say for certain how much of the population of South Africa follows cricket – forgive my ignorance. Looking again at the domestic competition, the SuperSport Series, South Africa’s premier first-class competition, features only 6 teams, Cape Cobras, Dolphins, Eagles, Lions, Titans and Warriors. However, again this can’t be compared to the State Championship. The SuperSport teams aren’t simply provincial teams, they’re franchises, representing mergers between provincial teams. The Cape Cobras for example is a joint venture of the Western Province and Boland provincial cricket teams. The SuperSport Series is touted as the successor to the Currie Cup, but in fact the Currie Cup effectively continues as the Provincial Three-Day Competition, a competition with first-class status featuring 14 teams, which is more closely comparable with the State Championship. It would be fair to say that cricket in South Africa is very popular, with the popularity crossing ethnic boundaries to some degree – Wikipedia notes that cricket is the only sport to rate as one of the top two sports for every community.

So that is my case, made in various ways, for New Zealand being the best cricket team in the world, adjusted for size.

With the BCCI offering amnesty to players in the ICL, the one remaining obstacle to the rebel NZ players returning has been breached. With the Indian board allowing their players to return to the fold, they will also drop their objection to NZ players returning to sanctioned cricket if they leave the ICL.

It’s an interesting move by the BCCI. Some are taking it to be an effort to exploit the ICL’s apparent difficulties. I wonder though if it might be an attempt to head the new APL off at the pass.

It has been a while now since the possibility of the rebel players returning arose, with the ICL offering to release the NZ players from their contracts. We’ve heard nothing since then, and it is reported that none of them have as yet taken up the opportunity to jump ship.

Were they waiting for this amnesty before making their move? Tuffey has certainly expressed his interest in returning and with his excellent recent first-class season he’d have to be confident of getting back into the Black Caps. Bond of course would walk into any team. However, he’s choosing his words carefully. He seems to still have his mind on the ICL. His contract is still worth $800,000 – that’s a lot to walk away from. But surely he can expect at least that much in the IPL.

We’ve got to expect that by the end of next month that both Tuffey and Bond will have handed in their ICL contracts and started warming up for the Black Caps.

Since the series against India finished two weeks ago, ending the cricket season, I’ve felt like I’ve been floating on a becalmed sea – lost and directionless. You may have guessed by the fact that I’ve only been posting filler recently. I’m not the only one; Iain O’Brien took nearly two weeks to post his account of the final day of the 3rd test.

To save my sanity I have compiled the upcoming tours by the NZ team from the future tours programme and put together a long term schedule, in all its technicolour glory.

Its not looking too bad actually. A 20-20 lark coming up and then a tour of Sri Lanka in a few months time, which is a bit of a bonus at that time of year. Having a tour of Pakistan scheduled is not encouraging given that no one is going to go to Pakistan, but efforts are being made to ensure that the test series is played at least, quite likely in New Zealand. A bit of light relief when the Bangladeshis visit before the hard core assignment of the next 12 months, hosting Australia.

Following the news that the ICL are offering their New Zealand contractors early release from their contracts (possibly making them elligible for their national teams), the ICL are now suggesting that they expect them to return for their October tournament, presumably to be re-banned.

So they will only be available for a few months. Off season.

A quick squiz at the Future Tours Programme and scheduled tournaments shows that in the window when these players will be uncontracted they will be available for the ICC World Twenty20 (is that the 20-20 world cup again? already?) and a tour of Sri Lanka. Two fixtures. Then back to limbo.

There have been several hopeful stories of NZ’s ICL rebels possibly being welcomed back to the fold due to a reconciliation between the ICL and BCCI. In all of those stories, the hope turned out to be despairing. There would be no reconciliation between the two.

The only credible end to the impasse with the BCCI refusing to recognise the ICL was for the ICL to fold. With the ICL’s cancelling of its March “World Series”, the collapse of the ICL seems to be on the cards. Another strong indication that the ICL is at least shrivelling up is the report that an offer has been made to the New Zealand members of the league that they can be released from their contracts if they choose.

If this report is true, it is a very interesting development. While it might be optimistic to think that gaining release from their contracts would automatically remove the rebel stigma from them (Hamish Marshall has left the ICL but is still treated like a pariah), it is still a necessary step in their rehabilitation.

The NZ players in the ICL are Shane Bond, Darryl Tuffey, Nathan Astle, Craig McMillan, Chris Harris, Andre Adams and Lou Vincent. Astle, McMillan and Harris are all effectively retired or beyond selection. They would have no good reason to ditch their contracts. The other four however are interesting cases. Adams and Vincent would remain potential selections for New Zealand (considerably more so with Bracewell moving on), though they would have to fight hard for places in the squad. Shane Bond is a bit of a mystery. Almost everyone involved in cricket in New Zealand would want to see him back playing for New Zealand. However, he has stated many times that he would not come back even if the opportunity arose. It might also invalidate a lot of the content of his tell-all autobiography. Of course, he hasn’t absolutely ruled it out, to my knowledge, and he could always add a happy-ending final few chapters of leading the Black Caps bowling at the 2011 World Cup and some IPL glory.

If anyone is going to make best use of this opportunity it is Darryl Tuffey. While he is by no means NZ’s best bowler, our heavy artillery is so depleted, he would be welcomed back enthusiastically.

I was disappointed to learn last week that Chris Martin (avg. 2.17, high score 12) is not the worst ever test batsman, the honour for which goes to Pommie Mbangwa (avg. 2, high score 8).

However, NZ really cleans up in the list of worst ever specialist test batsmen. NZ owns the list. Of 41 specialist batsmen with averages under 25, there are 11 NZers, including the batsmen rated the worst, Lawrie Miller (avg. 13.84, high score 47).

There are several names in the list from the 50s and 60s, when NZ cricket was completely out if its depth internationally. However, there are several more recent names, including test incumbent Jamie How.

They are all heroes and we salute their efforts. Also, if you look a bit deeper, there are stories that sit alongside the stats that change the context of their “achievements” somewhat. For example, Lawrie Miller had his best match (aggregate of 72) in the NZ’s first ever test victory. Similarly John Parker featured in our first win over Australia. Trevor Franklin, while not achieving much himself, was half of one of the best opening pairings we’ve had; his partnerships with John Wright averaged 55. It’s interesting to note actaully how many of the players are specialist openers, starkly demonstrating the problems we’ve had in that position. A couple of the players also have reputations as bowlers (perhaps because their batting reputations are so poor), such as John Morrison. I also note Bruce Murray bowled only one over in his career, but gave away no runs and took a wicket, perhaps making him one of the best ever test bowlers.

The problem of whether the Black Caps should tour Zimbabwe, pull out of the tour and face penalties or be forbidden from touring by the government has gone away, at least for a year. It seems that NZC and Zimbabwe Cricket have agreed to postpone the tour until next year.

That is hardly a satisfactory solution, but given the significant consequences of the other options, it is welcome.

A bit of editorialising in the Cricinfo article I linked to suggests that by next year Mugabe might be out of power. That idea quite seriously underestimates Mugabe’s ability to survive (who thought he would still be here after his defeat in last year’s election?), but it is true that it would solve the problem as far as cricket is concerned. Zimbabwe won’t be free from Mugabe and his legacy unless and until there is recompense for the victims of Mugabe’s crimes, but that is not an issue for cricket to worry about. (There is still the issue of corruption within Zimbabwe Cricket, but that is an issue for the ICC.)

With an appointment with Zimbabwe looming in the touring schedule, I’ve been following events there in the hope that things are improving in the country so that our tour won’t be the moral minefield it was when we last toured in 2005. The recent formation of a unity government has given me hope, but the subsequent arrest of one of the Movement for Democratic Change ministers on terrorism charges indicate that things aren’t going to change that quickly.

The fact is that while Mugabe is in power, Zimbabwe is no place for us to be visiting. The abuse of human rights will continue and democracy will continue to be trampled upon. We should not tour Zimbabwe in July.

Thankfully then, the government is concerned about the impending tour. There may be a chance that they will step in and ensure the tour will not go ahead.

You will recall that we were last scheduled to tour Zimbabwe in 2005. An unholy stink was raised amongst opponents and supporters of the tour. Mike and I had a minor punch-up over it on Mike on Cricket. I think that neither NZC or the government wanted that tour to go ahead, but cancelling the tour without penalties would require the government to legislate to make touring illegal. Essentially, the solution was for the government to block the players’ passports were they to try to leave the country. This was a step too far for the then Labour-led government, and at the time I had to agree that while it was morally objectionable for us to tour Zimbabwe, it would be a violation of the players’ rights to forbid them to travel. Basically, the ICC had set the bar too high for governments to prevent tours.

Since then however, both England and Australia have prevented tours of Zimbabwe in exactly this way. Also, our current National-led government seems to be prepared to play loose with our rights (at least two bills presented by the government have been deemed inconsistent with the Bill of Rights Act by the attorney general). There are calls for the government to ensure the tour does not go ahead.

I still think that banning the players from travelling would be the wrong thing to do, but for the right reason. Some believe it would be possible to legislate against the tour without going to such extremes, so who knows, it may be possible to do it the right thing for the right reason. I note however that recently John Key has been trying to suggest that security and health risks are equally important reasons not to go to Zimbabwe. Both of which strike me as spurious – as far as I can tell the only people threatened by violence in Zimbabwe are those targeted by the government, and the players are in no danger from cholera from their bottled water. It sounds a bit like he is trying to find excuses for the tour to be abandoned without a government order. Which would mean that the tour would be abandoned for the wrong reasons.