It’s four damn pages long. I don’t have time to read that sort of epic. So I put it through Wordle to get the gist of the document:

Context

“Is it a conspiracy? Or is it just an accident, designed to give New Zealand a significant advantage?” Or perhaps there is a less suspicious explanation.

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?):

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:

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.

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.

With 10 internationals, the India tour is now the marquee series of the Black Caps season. And with some decent weather, let’s hope it gives us some more decisive results.

I wonder if there is a stadium they could schedule it at that doesn’t have any shadow-casting structures at the wrong part of the ground.

The other option is to bring the whole tour forward by a week. There is a massive gap in our schedule after the Chappel–Hadlee in February, but that would require rescheduling five ODIs and the 20-20. Or they could wrap the test series around the ODI series for a lark.