Crucket

I struggle so much to find time to blog these days, so it is quite exasperating when a game finishes so early I don’t even manage to say a word about it.

Three days of the first test have gone by and New Zealand are doing really well. Over 200 runs ahead. McCullum piling on a double century on the first day. Martin and Vettori both getting wickets. Reece Young making the most of his selection behind the stumps. … Except the match is over already, after only three days. It wasn’t the first test at all, despite featuring both teams full test squads – it was just a warm-up match.

I’m a bit confused. I thought warm-up matches were arranged as a favour for visiting teams, to help them get acclimatised to the conditions in the country they have found themselves in. And possibly give a few of the local fringe players a chance to impress against international opposition. It seems terribly cheeky to sneak our own front-line test players in and let them do some acclimatising as well.

Something else we’ve waited a long time for: back to back victories. 238 days since that last happened in any format.

Vampire Weekend:

What a nice way to start the home summer: something we haven’t seen for 138 days – a Black Caps’ victory!

Phoenix Foundation, Bleaching Sun (the Crucket themetune):

You’d have to admit that the spot-fixing controversy has cast doubts on the credibility of the tour by Pakistan. NZ Cricket’s PR desk must be working overtime thinking up ways to engage us in cricket this summer.

The other day I got one of those ideas by email from the BLACKCAPS.co.nz FanZone – and my jaw nearly hit the desk. One week out from the start of a shaky tour with the shadow of gambling hanging over it, NZC are offering me $10 to place a bet at the TAB.

That is some canny PR. I love it.

Following The Ashes? Of course you are. Can you tell me then where you get your Ashes-related Twitter feeds, because we’re not getting them at @theashes, as we have been told most emphatically:

theashes I AM NOT A FREAKING CRICKET MATCH!!! That means you @matywilson @zandertrego @thesummats @ atonyboffey @faz1988 and MORE

Average batsman’s score in the Subcontinent in tests in the last 3 years: 39.72

Average outside the Subcontinent: 34.08

There is a new Wellington-based cricket blog :

Livin’ on the Outside Edge: A social commentary on cricket, politics, and life in the Windy City…but mainly cricket

Written by some guy David Abricossow, who – Wellington being what it is – I probably know in some capacity.

It looks really good so far and I am looking forward to following it through the summer.

The mainstream media reported Scott Styris’ rubbishing of the cult surrounding the Basin Reserve on Twitter:

scottbstyris @iainobrien btw OB I hate the basin! You can keep this place! If the ground was in dunedin it would really be the worst place ever to play

However, they chose to ignore Iain O’Brien’s cynicism towards the cult surrounding the monarchy:

iainobrien is there a Will and Kate sex tape available… is that what all the fuss is about??

You could debate, if you wanted to, who had the better of the first two tests, India or New Zealand. But that would be rather missing the point. The big stories in this series are firstly that New Zealand has not been nearly as bad as everyone expected them to be and secondly the 8th ranked team is giving the first ranked team a run for its money.

In this context, the result of the third test is almost irrelevant. Even if New Zealand loses the last test, a 0-1 result was all we were hoping for. Win or lose next week, we’ve achieved. If India do win, they probably won’t be disappointed with the series result, though their confidence as the top team after the series win against Australia will have been dented.

Going back to the rankings, we can actually put all this in numbers. As you may be aware, the official ICC test rankings are based on points earned by winning tests and test series with half points for draws. The points are then weighted by the relative rankings of the two teams. It’s all very arcane, but the ICC have a webpage that calculates future ratings.

Putting in a 1-0 win to India shows that New Zealand will gain 2 ratings points from the series, whereas India will lose a point. In other words, two draws with India means more to New Zealand than two draws, a test win and a series win means to India. If you want to dream: a 0-0 drawn series will give us a full 5 ratings points, while a 1-0 win will give us a massive 9 points.

As it happens, there is not a lot of competition for the top spot at the moment. India are way out in front and even a 0-1 loss will keep them well clear of South Africa in 2nd place. However, places 6, 7 and 8 are pretty tightly contested. After this series, New Zealand is guaranteed of raising a ranking to 7. However, that could be lost if the Windies’ series against Sri Lanka continues to go well. So we could end up staying at the bottom of the table despite a favourable result, and have to wait until the series against Pakistan in January to make a proper move up the rankings.