Crucket

So, the NZ home international season has now started, with the NZ XI–Zim warm-up match completed.

You’d like to think that a warm-up match – particularly one with most of the home test squad playing – might tell you a bit about the players’ current form and how they might play against each other in the upcoming matches. Unfortunately, a match where 4/5 batsmen in an innings retire and the other team lose loads of their wickets to a player who doesn’t even qualify to be in the test team, is not going to have great predictive potential.

Instead, let’s compare the two squads.

New Zealand

Here’s the squad most of whom played in a team good enough to beat Australia:

• Ross Taylor (c) – 20th ranked batsmen
• Trent Boult – 3/26 in bowling Aus out for 136
• Doug Bracewell – already fulfilling his big destiny in first season
• Dean Brownlie – scores a 50 in every test (admittedly, only 3 so far)
• Martin Guptill – ranked within the top 50 (Don’t think that is impressive? Check out the Zimbabwean squad)
• Brendon McCullum – hitting and missing as an opener
• Chris Martin – 210 test wickets (the Zimbabwean squad has 145 between them)
• Tim Southee – slowly approaching higher mediocrity
• Kruger van Wyk (wk) – not quite good enough for SA, good enough for us?
• Daniel Vettori – fricken’ awesome
• BJ Watling – battling for a gap in the team rather than on his own merits
• Sam Wells – who knows?
• Kane Williamson – not exactly setting the world alight at this level so far

Zimbabwe

And the team that came close to beating New Zealand:

• Brendan Taylor (c) – Wellington’s only Twenty20 centurion (I think)
• Regis Chakabva – 1 test to his name, against us
• Elton Chigumbura – 1449 Facebook likes
• Graeme Cremer – a rhino!
• Kyle Jarvis – a quick with an SR of <50
• Hamilton Masakadza – holder of 2/5ths of the squad’s centuries, i.e. 2
• Shingi Masakadza – test virgin
• Stuart Matsikenyeri – opener of thoroughly modest ability
• Tino Mawoyo – 66th ranked batsman, second only to Brendan Taylor
• Keegan Meth – test virgin and a struggler in ODIs
• Forster Mutizwa – test virgin, not too shabby in ODIs
• Ray Price – 63rd ranked bowler, second only to Kyle Jarvis in the squad with Mpofu injured
• Tatenda Taibu – a genuine keeper/batsman, and a relative veteran with 27 tests
• Prosper Utseya – 1 test, nearly 8 years ago
• Brian Vitori – 88th ranked bowler after 2 tests, but 56th after 1
• Malcolm Waller – hit the winning runs against us at Bulawayo

So

Looking at those two lists, NZ clearly have the wood over Zimbabwe. That Zimbabwe squad is looking very shabby and full of holes, even compared to a NZ squad with more mediocrity than class.

Still, this is the 8th ranked team playing against the de facto 9th ranked team. It isn’t an even contest, but it would hardly be an upset if Zimbabwe made it competitive.

Wellington score a respectable 161/8 but are still beaten by 68 runs (chasing Auckland’s 229). Gah!

But despite Wellington being on the receiving end, it really is heartening to see a team score over 200 in a match. And good to see Lou Vincent amongst the runs, even if only in his games against Wellington. And Guptill’s 62 off 35 was heartwarming. It would be my hope that Auckland get through to the Champions League so that Vincent and Guptill can be unleashed against the world. (Also want to see Victoria get through, so that Ross Taylor gets a run.)

In championing Auckland in this way, I suppose I have lost hope for Wellington. With 5 games still to play in the Cup, Wellington are going to have to outscore two out of Central, Otago and Auckland by 3 wins and Northern by 1 to make the final. A hard task and possibly numerically impossible. Oh well. Beating Canterbury is as good as making the finals though.

Dammit dammit dammit dammit!

Dammit that the test had to finish like this.

Dammit that nearly five days of cricket, including O’Brien’s spell of awesome, Vettori’s century, Tuffey’s out of the blue 80, Pakistan’s fight-back, Guptill’s fight-back-back, was washed away by a scant hour of rain. In fact, that trivial shower of rain in the deciding hour of the deciding test of the series has made irrelevant the two tests that preceded it.

Dammit!

Daniel Vettori has just now been dismissed for 134. That is a stunning return on the decision to promote him. And it’s not just his own score of 134 that is worth celebrating. Vettori came in with the score at 136/4, with a first-innings lead in the balance, and departed with the score at 408 and a humongous first innings lead of 185. At 6 he can not only save an innings, he can also build big innings. This also allows Tuffey to fill the roll shepherding the lower order.

This 134, by the way, has pushed Vettori’s average over 30 for the first time (excepting his first few matches). It also pushes his average in the no. 6 spot up to above 40.

An average in the 30s is great for a bowler, good for an all-rounder, but pretty average for a batsman. So it is disheartening to note that 4 of the 5 batsmen that bat above Vettori have averages in the 20s. (Taylor, currently the world’s 9th best batsman, is the exception).

Of course, all of the junior batsmen have played so few tests that their averages are pretty volatile. Daniel Flynn for example has only dropped below 30 in this series and would be back up again if he scored a century in the next innings. Though the more innings they have, the more confident we can be that their average reflects their ability.

There is a statistical value that can measure how confident we can be about an average, called the standard error of the mean. The larger the sample size (in this case, the number of innings), the more accurate the mean (batting average in this case). The standard error of the mean is calculated (assuming several things about the statistical distribution) by dividing the mean by the square root of the sample size. So we should be able to get a measure of the reliability of a batsman’s average by dividing it by the square root of the number of innings played.

So Daniel Flynn’s average of 28.7 off 29 innings has a standard error of about 5.3. My very rudimentary and rather naive interpretation of this sort of standard error is that we can be only 63% certain that he is not batting at an average of 30 or higher and has just been unlucky.

For Guptill (avg. 23.5, 14 innings) we can be only 93% certain that his average shouldn’t be 30. Whereas for McIntosh, we can be only 79% certain that he is not hiding an average of 30 behind his current average of 26.41 off 18 innings.

Now, B-J Watling, this test’s debutante, has scored a mere 18 runs, giving him a disappointing average of 18. However, the standard error of this average is itself 18. This means that even with this poor start to his career, we can only suggest with 83% certainty that he won’t score 30 runs in every innings here on in.

(Any of this make sense?)

By the way, we can be 99.8% certain Flynn shouldn’t be averaging 40, but only 96% certain for Watling. Two ways of saying “definitely” I suppose.

You have to love the Otago Daily Times and their eternal optimism. From any number of press-conference sound bites, they chose ‘NZ has talent to win’ from Vettori as their headline.

It’s nice to believe that Vettori has faith in his players, but the quote the ODT article uses is just an empty throw-away platitude. If the Black Caps are going to succeed in Sri Lanka, they are going to have to do it by hard graft and good strategy. I don’t want to run down the ability of our players, but except for a couple of exceptions, natural talent is not our greatest strength. (It is a fair point that lack of experience is one of our weaknesses though.)

In contrast, Sti Lanka is overflowing with naturals. Their batting line up is lead by the eminently talented Sangakarra, currently the number 1 batsmen in test cricket. With him will be Jayawardene, another fine, fine player. The series against Pakistan has also unearthed another natural talent, Angelo Mathews, who scored 191 runs in the test series and bowled a good few overs as well.

I’m not sure where he is injury-wise, but if Muralitharan plays he will of course be the greatest talent on the park. However, the latest bowling wonder in Sri Lanka has been Ajantha Mendis. He’s still finding his feet, but if he is going to break through against any team, it’s likely to be the Black Caps. He gave us a lot of trouble at the World 20-20, the results of which give him a 20-20 bowling average against NZ of 3.

Against this, New Zealand has potential top-20 talent in Taylor and Ryder, McCullum has a gift for the limited-over formats and Vettori carries much of the team’s talent. For the rest of the team though, while there is plenty of ability there in the likes of Guptill and O’Brien just as quick examples, match-winning talent is a bit short at present, if you can see the distinction I am making.

The facts are, Sri Lanka are a better team than us by a long way. If we are going to succeed in this tour, we are going to have to play very well.

In the middle of the ODI series, where Indian were flaying the Black Caps, Stuff were exclaiming that Vettori was holding onto his no. 1 ranking. Not likely. By the time that article saw print Vettori had already dropped to 2nd, as the recently updated rankings now show. Vettori has now in fact dropped to 5th, after going wicketless in Auckland.

Kyle Mills managed to hold onto this spot at 3, thanks to his 1/27 in Auckland. Jacob Oram dwindled a bit, dropping from 14 before the series to 19 afterwards. Patel and Southee also slipped, while O’Brien, Ryder, Elliott and Butler don’t even make it into the top 100 (they are, respectively, 118, 137, 131 and 127).

Somehow I expected things to be worse for our bowlers.

Amongst the batsmen, Ryder reached a career high of 47, which is quite impressive considering he was ranked 77 before the series. Guptill was similarly successful; starting the tour at 72 and reaching 44 by the end.

Our highest ranked batsmen remains Taylor, who has slipped out of the top 20 over the series to sit at 23. McCullum is also in the 20s, at 27, where he started the series.  Styris drops into the 30s, despite not getting a bat in his one game, though that will include some degradation from missing the Chappell–Hadlee. Oram’s 8 runs in 3 innings pushes him into the 40s.

Elliott dipped slightly from 57 to 60, though that could have been as bad as 65 if it wasn’t for his furious cameo in Hamilton. Neil Broom just squeezes into the top 200. Kyle Mills didn’t improve his batting ranking much, though he finishes at 19 as an all-rounder. The biggest mover of all was Peter McGlashan,whose late innings heroics in Hamilton boosted his ranking from 329 to 235.

Love this image from the Herald, from an article extolling the strengths of our exciting top four, McCullum, Ryder, Guptill and Taylor, showing them all flourishing their blades.

The Indians of course have brought along debatably the best ODI top order currently in service. (That would be a fiery debate however.)

Let’s see how the two top four compare head to head.

Not entirely flattering to the New Zealanders in terms of ranking, with an average of about 50 compared to an average of about 12 for the Indians. However, the stats don’t look vastly different (except maybe the rather unfair comparison between McCullum and Tendulkar). Based on these averages, we’d expect the Indians to score about 150 from about 29 overs. Whereas the New Zealanders will score 160 off about 31 (admittedly rather skewed by Guptill’s stats). Pretty much dead even.

Indian have an extremely good middle order in Dhoni alone, but NZ have Vettori and Mills in their bowling line up. You’ve got to expect this to be a close run series. I’m picking 3-2 to New Zealand.

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

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.

So Andy Moles is confident that we can take it to the Aussies in next week’s Chappell–Hadlee. As well he should, it is our turn:

04/05: drawn (1-1)
05/06: Australia (1-2)
06/07: New Zealand (3-0)
07/08: Australia (0-2)

And I reckon we can do it. Australia are a team on the slide. They’re being creamed by South Africa (222 all out in the 4th ODI). Their lineup is in upheavel (only 7 of the squad from the last Chappell–Hadlee remain in the current squad). Their fans are turning against them. And, y’know, my 3-year old gets a lot of Aussie DVDs out of the library – the Wiggles, Raggs, the Hooley Dooleys – and if they’re anything to go by, your typical Australian is childish and annoying and likes dressing up like a goofy animal… Ah, who am I kidding?

The Aussies will be all over us in the Chappell–Hadlee. We’ve slid at least as far the Aussies – I mean, we’d love to be as competitive with South Africa. And only 5 of our squad were in the last C–H series.

Still, it should be a great series to follow. There’ll be 5 whole matches. Australia will have a few weaknesses to exploit and we’ve got some players who we still haven’t had the opportunity to see perform under pressure.

Players to watch

Kyle Mills: Has had a very disappointing season in the test series, but remains very strong in ODIs. Has something like six times as much experience as Southee, the next most experienced strike bowler, so will be the pivot of our strike bowling team.
Martin Guptill: McCullum, Ryder and Taylor should be the most entertaining batsmen to watch, but Guptill’s performance will be interesting as he could be playing for a long-term position in the team.

Mitchell Johnson: Playing terribly against SA, but destroyed us in the tests last year. Which Mitchell is going to show up?
The new openers: Shaun Marsh and David Warner; they have a difference of 35 in their strike rate (in Warner’s favour) and abut 15 in their averages (in Marsh’s favour). I’m intrigued to see which approach better pays off.