Crucket

Greatbatch: “We played like dicks”

No reports that Greatbatch has been banned for this outburst, so we can assume the “old fella” didn’t make an appearance.

Once it started that way, it had to end this way. First, an embarrassing loss to Bangladesh, followed by a disappointing two in a row and no chance of winning the series. And then the mortifying series loss. It follows all the rules of dramatic progression that this had to lead to a white wash. Any other result would have been an anticlimax. And who would have wanted that?

How much respect did the selectors have for Bangladesh when they picked the squad for this tour?

In the last ODI, Bangladesh had only one player in the team who had not played more than a dozen matches, Suhrawadi Shuvo. In contrast, New Zealand had nearly half a team of rookies, N McCullum, Williamson, Redmond, Watling and Bennett, who was in fact playing his first ever ODI. And we also have McKay (8 ODIs) and Stewart (4) on the bench.

While it is true that we’re got a few injuries (Styris, Oram), we’ve sent half our experience to Zimbabwe.

Prospects of play in final – potentially face-saving – ODI currently not good. Thunderstorms forecast; 60% chance of rain.

“…Kane Williamson’s 108 saved the Black Caps from further embarrassment.”

I don’t think so. I reckon the embarrassment of losing 3 games on the trot to Bangladesh, and hence the series, is pretty much total. Full credit to Williamson, but a century plus a hat-trick plus a Nobel Prize would hardly have saved the blushes.

This is a low point in the fortunes of a team that has been spiralling downwards of late. And it has turned the spiral into a plummet. This series so far has seen our ICC ODI rating fall from 112 to 100. It is an embarrassment to rank amongst our worst.

In my earlier, quite foolish, post, written in a pique of anger after the first defeat, I claimed that Bangladesh were as bad as they had ever been. Despite waiting for years for an improvement, Bangladesh simply refused to get better, so I had banished any thoughts of them being anything other than easy-beats. Well I can’t possibly see it that way now. Even allowing for a sub-standard performance by New Zealand, Bangladesh has played very well and are deserving victors. It may well be that they have finally arrived.

Am I right in thinking that a cricketing nation’s coming of age is generally announced by a thumping of New Zealand? The two newest test-playing nations before Bangladesh – Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe – both went through their periods of extreme weakness, followed by improvements. To my mind, Sri Lanka’s fortunes turned around in the early 90s, leading to their winning of the World Cup in ’95. Their first big success came in ’92, when they beat us in both tests and ODIs at home. (Of course, a terrorist attack in Colombo completely disrupted New Zealand’s tour, making it nearly impossible for us to field a decent, prepared team, but that is kind of beside the point.) And as a test team, Sri Lanka hadn’t made it until they had their first series win overseas, which came in New Zealand in ’95, marking a turn-around in their test fortunes (since that series they have won 56 tests and only lost 43). Zimbabwe’s golden period was from about ’98 to ’02. In that period their only real series victories were against New Zealand (’00 at home and ’01 here).

Choosing DVDs for watching while it’s raining

I’ve been taking rather perverse pleasure in the wake of the Paul Henry affair in following his excoriation on Twitter. Every hour or so, a tweet pops up with some delicious, witty put down.

But then yesterday Harsha Bhogle, crown-prince of Indian cricket commentating, tweeted

nztv host paul henry suspended for two weeks??i thought he should never be allowed on television again.come on kiwis,show your class

Reminding us that people are still being upset by Henry’s comments and TVNZ’s part in them.

Well firstly, I should suggest to Harsha that you aren’t likely to find much class on breakfast TV. Secondly, strictly speaking Paul Henry shouldn’t be forbidden from being on TV on the basis of his recent comments, or even his history of offensive comments. However, in my opinion TVNZ should not have him fronting their breakfast TV show. They should have cleaned up his act years ago, but now that he has revealed himself as a deep racist, he should be dumped from that spot, if not moved off TVNZ screens entirely.

However, despite being the national broadcaster, TVNZ run themselves, so are free to employ Henry in whatever capacity they like. All we can do is vote with our remotes/web browsers. I have been avoiding TVNZ for years in a silent protest against Paul Henry’s presence on the network. And when I have wanted to link to some television cricket news coverage on Crucket, I always link to TV3′s coverage.

So here is Crucket’s official endorsement for cricket news from a TV network:

3 Sport: Cricket

Brendon McCullum has won the T20 Performance of the Year at the ICC Awards for his 116 against Australia at Christchurch. I haven’t bothered to find out what the other contenders were, I don’t need to – there could be no contest to that amazing innings.

Relive it below (or see a longer version in two parts with better picture quality, more inane commentary, but less annoying music):

So as I, kind of, predicted, we went down against Bangladesh again after missing out on warm-up matches.

This one match has really buggered our record against Bangladesh. Sorry to be cruel about Bangladesh, but having “2″ in the losses column against them is disappointing, and halves our win/loss record.

Even if we argue that circumstances were against us slightly (lack of warm-ups, unfamiliar conditions, rough end of D-L calculation), we should have won this match given the gap between us and them.

Could it be that I am underestimating Bangladesh? Have they improved that much since we last lost to them that they are now competitive?

Our loss to them in 2008 was Bangladesh’s 7th win against top teams. Since their 2nd win in 2004, they had been getting just over 1 win a year. Now, two years later, they have scored their 13th, with yesterday’s win against us, which on the surface looks like a much better record. They have, since October 2008 and up until yesterday’s match, played 25 matches and beaten Sri Lanka and England and scored 3 wins over the West Indies. It is hard to analyse this however because of those wins against the Windies when they were in the throes of a massive contract stoush. While you could say that the Windies are perfectly capable of losing to Bangladesh with their best team, it is hard to credit Bangladesh with all 3 of those wins.

You would have to say that going into yesterday’s match, Bangladesh’s record was no better than it was two years ago. Yesterday’s result was terrible. And for us to maintain our standard, we have to win the other 4 matches, as well as the next 5 in the future.

New Zealand are set to begin the 10/11 season in about half an hour with the 1st match of a 5-match ODI series against Bangladesh. Their preparation for this series will be … the 1st match of this series.

Both warm up matches were washed out. Vettori is annoyed. As well he might be if you recall what happened last time our warm up matches in Bangladesh were rained out – we were thumped in our only ever ODI loss to Bangladesh.

But that’s not too much of a worry when you consider that this entire tour is merely preparation for the World Cup.