Crucket

The mainstream media reported Scott Styris’ rubbishing of the cult surrounding the Basin Reserve on Twitter:

scottbstyris @iainobrien btw OB I hate the basin! You can keep this place! If the ground was in dunedin it would really be the worst place ever to play

However, they chose to ignore Iain O’Brien’s cynicism towards the cult surrounding the monarchy:

iainobrien is there a Will and Kate sex tape available… is that what all the fuss is about??

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!

I feel I was far too pessimistic in my last post so I’m going to look on the bright side as the kick off for the 2nd test approaches.

Losing Shane Bond was a big blow, no doubt, but the bowling attack that we’ll take into the Basin test, Martin, O’Brien, Tuffey and Vettori most likely,  is still strong. The strongest in the country excepting Bond. There shouldn’t be much doubt they can take 20 wickets, particularly at the Basin. So if they get 700 runs or so out of the batsmen across the match, we’ll be in with a good chance.

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.

Sticking with my minor theme of blog comments, here are a couple of gems from Iain O’Brien’s Cricinfo blog:

Posted by: UberMetroMallu at February 24, 2009 1:42 PM

Ian, you don’t have a chance in hell against us Indians; I’ll tell you why. Man, you’re a Blogger. I mean, tomorrow, when you’re tearing in to bowl your first ball, you’ll be thinking that you look like a lithe, power-packed, all muscle and guts, picture-of-intimidation, Fast Bowler, who creates doubts in the minds of the Batsmen. You’ll probably think that noise you just heard is the Batsman’s bottoms squeaking out of fear. But then, reality will prove to be different, as it often does. Sehwag will take one look at you and recognize you as that pasty Blogger who pretend to be a Cricketer; he’ll maul you, grab your entrails and squeeze the smelly stuff out of them. It’s not like he’s going to think, “Oh! I better not step out against this guy, or he’s going to Blog about me, gulp!” You’re finished man; the Indians are going to hit you all around the park. It’s a shame your performance won’t be anything to write home about, but, you’ll still have plenty to write about. Dig irony, Ian?

…

Posted by: Iain O’Brien at February 24, 2009 11:15 PM

Thanks for all the comments, especially the one where my Sehwag will ‘grab and squeeze my entrails’; mate, you need some help!!

Looking forward to an great series…

Iain

Iain O’Brien’s blog has been a crash hit, generating praise and controversy all to quickly in its brief life. It is not surprising perhaps that it has been syndicated by Cricinfo.

Just a day after urging us all to join O’Brien’s Facebook fanclub, JRod is disappointed that he has been absorbed by the evil Cricinfo empire.

One good thing about the Cricinfo version is that it includes photos, including this one of Iain in his evil empire uniform:

Compare:

Mark Gillespie

A contentious selection. Replaces Chris Martin, who, popular opinion has it, was hard done by to be dropped for this series. And beyond his selection, Dizzy’s popularity is divided. I like him, but then I’m a Wellingtonian. He is a wicket taker – he has over 200 for Wellington. But he gives away runs, and he does it by bowling too short too often. Can such an unsophisticated approach work at international level?

Iain O’Brien

Plenty’s been said about O’Brien already. He was a contentious selection last year as his earlier efforts for the Black Caps weren’t impressive. However, he came good during the tour of England. He now largely replicates his excellent first-class record in tests.

Jeetan Patel

It is tough being the second spinner behind Vettori. And it’s not going to get easier. In an international career already two years old, Jeets has played only 5 tests.

Kyle Mills

Back in the team, leapfrogging both Martin and Southee (and O’Brien in the bowling line up). Very surprising. He’s in because of his batting, which is fair enough because his batting is decent, but he’s selected as a bowler despite being overlooked in Australia behind two others, which just shows the contortions you can get into when your selections get too clever.