Napier
The McLean park wicket is supposed to be a belter. Which is great of course. Except that the Windies strength is their batting, as the Cricinfo preview tells us. We’re also hearing that the Black Caps batsmen were not looking good at practice, hinted at maybe in this article. The Windies certainly sound the more confident side, at least that’s what Tony Cozier reckons.
So advantage West Indies it would seem.
I don’t quite know how this happened. We have been beating them quite easily for the last 10 years. How did they suddenly become the stronger team? They really haven’t been doing much. Perhaps most of it is down to Chanderpaul. He’s the world’s best batsman just at the moment, you must have heard.
The Windies have played at Napier once before, but the game was rained off early. The other two matches played at Napier this century show its wicket’s capacity for runs. In 2005 NZ scored an innings of over 500 against Sri Lanka, who almost managed 500 in reply. Earlier this year, you’ll remember, England and NZ scored over 400 in their second innings (after pretty disappointing 1st innings admittedly).
