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.

So the Black Caps are now in the United Arab Emirates to play Pakistan in three one-dayers and two 20-20s (dropping an ODI from the plan from the original announcement). In fact, the first game is on Tuesday (Wednesday our time no doubt). I’ve added the series to my schedule here.

The ODIs will be played at the Sheikh Zayed Stadium in Abu Dhabi, the western-most of the UAE’s seven emirates, while the 20-20s will be played at the Dubai Sports City Cricket Stadium, in the next emirate to the east. I recall when cricket in the UAE used to be an annual international fixture. But that was at Sharjah, the third emirate from west to east.

Sharjah used to host a melange of ODI series, with a medley of cups and trophies, under a confusion of sponsors, with e.g. the Pepsi Cup being held one year and the Coca-Cola Cup the next. But there hasn’t been any cricket held in Sharjah for many years. It hadn’t occurred to me that Sharjah had fallen off the cricket map. Apparently, Sharjah has been tainted with the stain of match fixing and the stadium there has been abandoned to the wildlife. I’d somehow managed to miss all that.

But cricket is back in UAE. (And of course, let’s not forget that the ICC has its offices in the tax haven of Dubai.) Both Abu Dhabi and Dubai have built magnificent cricket stadiums and are crying out for top class team to come and play against Pakistan.

This happens to be a home series for the Pakistan team, despite being playing hundreds of miles from Pakistan. Perhaps the only significance in this is that Pakistan get to use their groundsmen to prepare the pitches.

Players to watch

Scott Styris: He hasn’t had a turn at bat in an ODI for over a year. Have the selectors been justified in keeping him out?
Tim Southee: Another player returning to the team. To date, he alone is all the selectors have identified as the future of New Zealand bowling. If this is going to eventuate, he is going to have to make an impact at some point.

Younis Khan: Out and in as captain in the matter of a few days. He’s done it before and has had periods where he refused to take the captaincy. You’ve got to assume he doesn’t like the job, or he just likes to shake the boat.
Mohammad Aamir: Another Pakistan teenage tear-away. Fast, accurate and aggressive. It is usually a curse to have such things said about you, but he could be a new Wasim Akram.

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.