As someone who played with Shane Bond in his first four tests eight years ago, I was delighted, and pleasantly surprised, by his return to the five-day game at Dunedin last week.

But his latest injury, which has put him out of the current test in Wellington and next week’s third match against Pakistan in Napier, leaves me wondering how long this comeback will last.

The strong suspicion is that his test days are numbered. My advice would be to turn his attention to the one-day game.

The quality of his bowling in Dunedin was no surprise. We’ve long known he has the ability to be among the very best, as a record of 87 wickets in 18 tests shows.

Pakistan captain Mohammad Yousuf, a terrific batsman who has seen the best of the modern game, puts him among the finest he’s played.

The aspect which did surprise me was his pace. He’s 34, has been through the wringer in terms of injuries, and yet he was still able to get the ball through at about 150km/h.

If you’re above 140km/h you’re lively; touch 150km/h and that puts you in a different league.

Bond’s performance in its own right was outstanding, but one point seemed to be missed by most commentators - his work created opportunities for the bowlers at the other end.

Take the eight wickets out of the equation for a moment.

If you watched the Pakistan batsmen, Bond’s presence and pace made them change their game plan.

When he was bowling they were all pretty keen to get to the other end.

They were noticeably more aggressive against the other bowlers, which in turn meant they took more liberties against Chris Martin, Iain O’Brien and Daniel Vettori, and that led to Read more…

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Given it’s the time of year for messages to the North Pole under the heading “Dear Santa”, maybe the Black Caps’ list should start with the urgent need for an off-field boss.

With the 32-run win over Pakistan, the first in more than a year, the team are on the cusp of returning to a semblance of success on the stage all good sides are measured - test matches.

The return of Shane Bond’s venom, the wilyness of Chris Martin, the crisp strokes of Ross Taylor and the all-round cunning of Daniel Vettori mean the team have incumbent talent. Vettori was delighted with the victory and with good reason.

But, even though the win was a good one, with character and doggedness, let’s wait before we give ourselves totally over to the illusion of a rosy future.

There are severe deficiencies, particularly in the batting. Can Daniel Flynn make it as a No3, averaging 21.50 in the position since his promising start of 95 against the West Indies a year ago?

Will New Zealand be able to return to an era where Flynn doesn’t have to think about striding out to bat when the ball is still brand new - having only touched the pitch, the stumps or the edge of a bat and a member of the slip cordon’s hands - due to a lapse in an opener’s concentration? Is Jesse Ryder, a man blessed with sensational hand-eye co-ordination, capable of a prolonged career or will a lack of fitness or discipline get the better of him?

There was enough in the dismissals of batsmen like Flynn, Grant Elliott, Peter Fulton, and even Taylor and Vettori himself to suggest that more help would not go amiss.

In Vettori’s era as skipper, with coaches John Bracewell and Andy Moles, there have been 22 tests with five wins - three against Bangladesh, one against England and yesterday’s Read more…

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Day Three
I woke this morning to a lot of noise outside. It was either raining very heavily, a tidal wave was coming, or there was a gale coming through. It was the later and that meant a tough day at the office for me. I bowl into the wind, that’s one of the jobs I have made my own. It is something I have prided myself on and if you’ve read a lot of my blogs you’ll know this; if you haven’t; when I was starting out for Wellington I picked the worst job in the team and I made myself good at it. There’s always a vacancy for the worst job in the work force. Doing that job has meant tough days at the office, but it does mean that I’m at the office, and I really do like my office!

I was 2 not out overnight and was looking forward to sticking around with the bat as long as possible. I’ve made a goal for myself every time I go out to bat to face 50 balls. If I do that the partnership should be up around the 50-run mark; even if I’ve only scored 10. Batting with Bondy was going to be fun, we were going to take every run on offer, and I knew he was pretty keen on hitting a couple of big balls! I was pretty happy too that Asif and Gul were not at full pace; they looked pretty tired from the day before.

I nicked a four and got a cover drive away off Gul. I was premeditating a little with that ball. I was guessing it was going to be full, and if it was, I was going to hit it as hard as I could. I had the wind behind me so if I didn’t quite get it, if it was in the air, it should still, hopefully, carry over the straight fielders. It was too wide to hit straight, so I just flung the bat at it, and it came off ok; sweet.

My first bowling spell was eight overs before lunch and then three straight after. Eleven overs of the first 14 to be bowled into that wind that day. It was hard work, and I was going well. I felt good, my rhythm good and my speeds were right up there. I felt like I was really doing my job, I was keeping the runs down so we could attack from the other end, and I was also making life tough for the batters that were in. The ‘into-the-wind’ role is often measured by how many wickets are taken at the other end, and in my first spell there was three; I was Read more...

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It was an old boys’ reunion even the most ardent New Zealand cricket follower would have struggled to envisage.

Shane Bond, Ian Butler and Daryl Tuffey probably had doubts as well over the intervening seasons, but in Tuesday night’s Tri-Series one-dayer against Sri Lanka they formed New Zealand’s three-pronged pace attack for the first time in more than seven years.

The trio last hunted as a pack at Kensington Oval, Bridgetown, Barbados, in June 2002 – and it was a successful expedition as the West Indies were humbled by 202 runs in the first test to tee up a historic series win in the Caribbean.

Injuries then became a byword of their respective careers, particularly for Bond and Butler.

While Bond’s list of ailments resemble a medical almanac, Butler’s inoperable back problems were the root cause of his frustrations.

New Zealand had just beaten Australia in the inaugural Chappell-Hadlee Trophy match at Melbourne’s Docklands Stadium in December 2004 when Butler realised his pain was more than irritating.

He gritted through a couple of domestic games for Northern Districts while ‘drugged up’ before scans revealed a disc compression or in Butler’s words: “Everything that could have gone with my back did go wrong.”

Butler was warned his cricketing career was over, he disagreed and spent a couple of Read more…

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GOOD

Daniel Vettori: Batting and bowling, and becoming a genuine all-rounder with Kapil Dev’s 400/4000 mark next on the list. Clearly at home with the captaincy blazer given his return of 74 wickets and 1232 runs in 21 matches in charge, but he can’t keep doing it all himself. There must be temptation aplenty to send him north up the batting order ahead of McCullum and even Oram - but his comments in the aftermath of the 2-0 series loss make it pretty clear that will not be happening.

Rangana Herath: 82 overs, 20 maidens, 209 runs, 8 wickets. This portly left-armer was predicted to be a threat, yet the Sri Lankan selectors overlooked him for their XI in the first test. Small mercies.

Samaraweera: He might not be an opener but he is bloody good: 159, 20, 143 and 25.

Iain O’Brien’s testicular fortitude: He is an unfashionable cricketer but he has some ticker. His 75-ball, 69-run, 20-over vigil with the captain was a terrific effort that put several batsmen above him to varying degrees of shame - he was out in the middle for longer than McIntosh, Guptill, Taylor, McCullum and Patel.

The “penetration”: The bowling struggled to make inroads into the powerful Sri Lankan batting order - only O’Brien and Vettori took wickets in all four Lankan innings. The inability to dislodge can be demonstrated by the scores at which Sri Lanka lost their 4th wicket: 300, 205, 295 and 301.

Chris Martin’s willow-waving: 4 bats, 2 runs, 25 balls, and an average of infinity. Read more…

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The NZ v Sri Lanka Test is well under way at Galle, and as I type this Murali has just smoked Chris Martin like a big fat Cuban cigar and sent the first ball he faced for six over cow corner.

Aside from the brilliant footage of turtles, corn on the cob, the fort, fishing vessels and cows, I have enjoyed the distraction of the banner competition.

Each cricketing nation displays idiosyncratic conventions in terms of its crowd banners: the Poms focus on Union Jacks with obscure hamlets and football clubs emblazoned across them, the Australians are massive on the spray paint vs sheet combination, and in India there is artistic flair for the vivid marker on to A3 paper approach.*

But overnight in Sri Lanka the preferred medium has been crayon on cardboard. And the banners on display have been variously good, bad, ugly and downright odd. Witness the following examples:

* “MAHELA & SANGA: These are our life”

* “NZ and SRI LANKA: Build up the p/ship between the above two strogly”

* “Carry on Sanga - our heartest congratulations”

* “Feel the heat when the lions on the hunt”

Read more…

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We walked off after day one at 293 for 3, as I said, not the best day in the field; that’s obvious. Day two was better though. We picked up the remaining seven wickets for 159 with Dan (Vettori) and Tommy (Chris Martin) both thoroughly earning their four wickets each. Dan bowled tightly throughout the innings and it was just a matter of time before he’d pick up wickets. Dan and I normally, in the past, have bowled well together, we’ve both been able to control the runs and then put scoreboard pressure on the batters to score. The ends we like to bowl from normally works that it suits us both too. I couldn’t hold up my end in the way I’ve been able to do enough in this first innings. So it took a change of ends for Dan so that he and Tommy could bowl together. And it worked, perfectly; the last four wickets for just eight runs, all of them off Muralitharan's bat. We love the way he bats, we all wish we could be that free. It’s raining right now, it’s almost 9am and we’d normally be at the ground by now.

An amazing storm came through around 5am this morning, thunder banging about and lightning as bright as I’ve ever seen; with it, torrential rain. The rain has eased but is still steady and doesn’t look like stopping anytime soon. We’ve watched the covers go on and come off, an amazing mission by the lads at the ground. The whole ground gets covered; I don’t know if there are that many covers in New Zealand, I’ve never seen anything like it. As we’ve watched them being taken off we know that it’s about a 90-minute even so there is no point going to the ground until the rain stops completely. There’s nothing we can do about it so it was a longer breakfast than normal and most of the boys will be in their room resting up some more.

Yesterday afternoon we got through to stumps two down and 87 on the board. McIntosh played a traditional Test match openers role. He blunted the bowlers and scored where he Read more...

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Daniel Vettori has emerged from a systems shake-up a more powerful figure in New Zealand cricket since, and possibly including, Stephen Fleming.

For the first time since taking over the captaincy following the 2007 World Cup Vettori can claim, some personnel issues aside, that this is his side.

With coach Andy Moles by design a more peripheral figure than John Bracewell, the onus has been placed on Vettori and his senior team-mates to drag New Zealand out of the massive hole they have dug for themselves in test cricket.

At the forefront of this sea change in philosophy has been Roger Mortimer.

Under the direction of Mortimer, who was pivotal in directing the 2004 Olympic campaigns of Sarah Ulmer and Hamish Carter, the onus has been put on players to map out their own career trajectories. Read more…

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