There’s been a lot of talk about Australia having completed an “unbeaten summer”, sweeping Pakistan and the West Indies in tests, ODIs and 20-20s.
Well leaving aside any precise considerations of solstices and weather patterns, as far as I am concerned summer is not over until the last match in the 09/10 season – 31 March. So if Australia want to celebrate an unbeaten summer, they will have to win every game up until then. That is going to be 2 tests, 2 20-20s and 5 ODIs, all against New Zealand.
Well good luck, ’cause I reckon we’re going to win at least one of them.
New Zealand Cricket has a very nice website, with loads of stats, great photos, live scoreboards, heaps of info and of course current news about the Black Caps.
One thing that has always amused me is how they push out press releases as news items with headlines and everything. These get to me through my RSS feed with the very nonspecific byline “from News”, so at first glance they look like they’re a newspaper article or a TV news segment.
“Full and exciting calendar for cricket lovers” was a recent “news” headline from NZC headquarters. And it certainly was news to me, coming as it did after I had waited out a month and a half of no international cricket and was struggling to raise any interest in the Bangladesh series.
I was further surprised to read in the article that:
The vagaries of international cricket scheduling will be highlighted over the coming two weeks as New Zealand, Australia, Bangladesh, Australia and the West Indies compete in all three formats of the game in six different locations at the business end of the cricket season.
In order to manufacture interest in what is left of the season, we’re being enticed with being able to watch a team, the West Indies, who we aren’t even playing against. This is New Zealand cricket news right? And what is the trick of listing one of our opponents, Australia, twice?
Beaten in every match and still being talked up. Forgive me for being ungracious in victory, but I find it hard to give Bangladesh much credit for their performance in the test match. 122 runs is a heavy loss, and that against the 6th ranked team. They also lost 20 wickets to New Zealand’s 12. A highest partnership of 145 to NZ’s 339.
I think it is pretty clear to anyone watching what went wrong for Bangladesh. The truth is, the batsmen didn’t look that bad. They just played the wrong game. They were too aggressive.
A quick calculation finds that Bangladesh scored 468 of their 690 runs in boundaries. About 2/3 of their runs. Whereas New Zealand scored 384 of their 811 in boundaries, less that half. If their 468 runs in boundaries had been the same proportion of their total as NZ’s 384 was, then their total would have been 988 and they might have won, well drawn at least.
They’ve got to calm down a bit. Learn to walk before they run and all that.
You know to keep your eye on the game at a 20-20 match, right? Not just because of the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nature of the action, but because some thug might be whacking a six RIGHT AT YOUR HEAD!
And be particularly careful when Ross Taylor is playing. He holds the record for 6s in 20-20s, with a massive 115 6s from 63 innings, including 28 from this year’s HRV Cup alone.
There’s only one thing to reasonably expect in a series against Bangladesh, a whitewash. Anything else is an upset – and that would be embarrassing. So it makes a lot of sense to talk up Bangladesh’s prospects before the first game of the tour, on the off-chance they do manage to fluke a win.
However, after last Friday’s 146-run caning, following up on the 20-20 mauling, I find it hard to see how you can continue to suggest that Bangladesh are asking questions. If they’re posing any questions, they are “Who was talking them up before the series and what were they thinking?” and “When does Australia arrive?”
I’m getting a bit annoyed with all the ads for the HRV Cup around town. It’s been a great competition and all, but these pictures on the ads of players or fans sweltering under the glare of some post-global warming wasteland
with a logo featuring a sun with a golden lustre only possible from filtering through a Western Australia dust storm
… well, that’s not really that much like a New Zealand summer.
And to give us these images this summer – this waterlogged, grey, dismal, abominable summer – it is nearly insulting.
Pakistan’s maddening 0-3 capitulation to Australia has knocked them out of the running in the NZ–Aus–Pak test tri-series. And Australia has shot to the top. It is now all to be decided by the NZ– Aus rubber, with NZ needing a win and Aus needing anything but a loss.
Some very interesting news is coming out of India regarding the Indian income tax department’s assessment of the BCCI’s tax status.
The tax department has looked at the BCCI’s returns and has confirmed what many of us have been suspecting of the BCCI, that they are much more concerned about their bottom line than they are about advancing cricket. They have determined that the BCCI are “totally commercial” and that “cricket is only incidental to its scheme of things.” Despite pulling in 2.7 billion rupees in 06-07, the tax department has noted that the BCCI has not developed any infrastructure or constructed any facilities.
All power to the BCCI for making so much money out of cricket. However, that profit is only a good thing if it is used for the promotion of the game. So it is a crying shame that the BCCI are treating their surplus as a profit.
It is of vital importance to the game that the various cricketing boards operate as charities (or not-for-profit). Profiteering is simply incompatible with developing the game. Developing the game requires investing in youth cricket, improving facilities and promoting the game globally. None of which will draw short-term profit, or even long-term monetary profit necessarily. Running cricket as a business will push the game towards the lowest common denominator.
Also, if the BCCI are conducting their operations on a purely commercial basis, that casts an unpleasant light on their ICL bashing activities. If the BCCI trying to quash the ICL was simply the action of one commercial entity against another, then it looks awfully like uncompetitive activity. And involving other cricketing bodies such as NZC in this looks potentially like a cabal.
But even if you are happy with the BCCI making money and comfortable with cricket being run on a commercial basis, there is still the issue of the BCCI’s tax status. Until it was revoked by the tax department, the BCCI had charity status, presumably meaning its revenue is tax exempt. But if it is operating commercially, it should be paying tax. From its income of 2.7 billion rupees for 06-07 (pre-IPL it should be noted), it owes 1.2 billion rupees in tax.
In my view – much worse than a charity chasing profit, much worse than leveraging your size and influence to stifle competition – the filthy rich not paying taxes is the fricken’ worst.
