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…

Administrator New Zealand Aaron Redmond, Andy Moles, Blogs.CMDN.com, Chris Martin, Cricket, Cricket Blogs, Daniel Flynn, Daniel Vettori, David Trist, Denis Aberhart, Grant Elliott, John Bracewell, John Graham, McCullum, Neil Broom, New Zealand, Peter Fulton, Ross Taylor, Stephen Fleming, Steve Rixon, Vettori

Balance - It is the one constant whenever Jacob Oram’s worth in the New Zealand test side was questioned.

Over the past couple of seasons in particular, when injuries and a seemingly terminal loss of form combined to reduce Oram to passenger status, Daniel Vettori was quick to point to the “balance” the big left-hander brought to the team.

At his best, he was the ultimate two-for-the-price-of-one cricketer, the rightful heir to the throne vacated by Chris Cairns, capable of scoring test centuries against the best attacks in the world, while troubling good batsmen with his height and ability to hit the seam.

At his least effective, he was still a threat in the middle order and an economical stock bowler who could keep opposition line-ups in check.

While there are myriad options to replacing Oram, there are five that would seem more attractive than most.

OPTION 1 Select James Franklin as a like-for-like straight swap.

Pros: He wants the job, telling his local paper: “I’m hoping [the selectors] think I’m the guy for that. I think I can do a job there for New Zealand. I’ve done it for years for Wellington, batting at No6 and bowling, so it’s nothing different for me.”

At his best, Franklin would offer the sort of balance a fit Jacob Oram provided, with his cultured left-handed batting and left-arm swing variety with the ball. If you watched him in the nets and knew nothing of his test record, who would think that he was a world-class player rather than a fringe selection.

Cons: “At his best” is the operative statement. Hands up - outside those who regularly attend Wellington’s first-class fixtures - anybody who has actually seen Franklin at his best? Over the past three seasons he has batted like a lion in first-class cricket, but looks as timid Read more…

Administrator New Zealand Australia, Blogs.CMDN.com, Brendon McCullum, Chris Cairns, Cricket, Cricket Blogs, Daniel Vettori, Franklin, Grant Elliott, Jacob Oram, Jesse Ryder, Mark Richardson, Ross Taylor, Sri Lanka, Stephen Fleming

One good reason New Zealand didn’t win the Champions Trophy final?

They avoided having to prance about in those white jackets - awarded to the winning team - which made the Australians look like a bunch of cruise ship crooners who had unexpectedly run aground at Centurion but were ready to break into a verse of Copacabana.

Still, the New Zealanders would have tolerated some dodgy dressing up if they’d been able to pocket the title yesterday. They collected US$1 million ($1.34 million) for their efforts, but money comes and goes; in the overall scheme of things that will amount to loose change for some of them once the divvying up is done; silverware would provide a validation for their efforts, plus the satisfaction of a line in the history book as the first two-time winner of the trophy.

And if they had it would have been a remarkable achievement, given that three first-choice players - Jesse Ryder, Jacob Oram (for bowling, if not, at the moment, batting) and the rejuvenated Daryl Tuffey - were lost to injury during the tournament, and inspirational captain Dan Vettori withdrew on the morning of the final with a hamstring injury.

It turned out to be a game too far for New Zealand, who had overcome a poor start to beat Sri Lanka, England and Pakistan in the space of nine days to improbably reach the final.

New Zealand then needed its best players to stand up yesterday. A bad day, then, for acting captain Brendon McCullum to have a nightmare - 14 balls for a duck and dropping a crucial skier - Ross Taylor to miss out again, and Grant Elliott, who carried New Zealand past Pakistan in the semifinal, to get a good ball from Brett Lee.

Above all, an awful day for Vettori to miss altogether. He is the team’s best bowler Read more…

Administrator Champions Trophy, New Zealand Aussies, Bangladesh, Blogs.CMDN.com, Bond, Brett Lee, Cameron White, Champions Trophy, Cricket, Cricket Blogs, Grant Elliott, Guptill, Ian Butler, Jacob Oram, James Franklin, Jeetan Patel, Jesse Ryder, McCullum, Mills, New Zealand, Pakistan, Ross Taylor, Sri Lanka, Vettori

It’s early season in South Africa so maybe this Champions Trophy will be won by bowlers.

That’s unlikely - but if it is the case then, with three bowlers, Daniel Vettori, Kyle Mills and Shane Bond, all within the top 10 ranked ODI performers, there’s plenty of reason for hope.

That may be false hope because you cannot win enough ODIs in succession if your top five batsmen are failing. The fact we have 30 world-class overs available and continue to slip in ODI rankings proves there are major problems in our batting.

So why do we boast a top five line-up with more than acceptable records and yet fail to win enough games?

Jesse Ryder, Martin Guptill, Ross Taylor and Grant Elliott all boast averages above 35 with excellent strike rates. In fact they are numerically better or comparable to key players in the 2000 Champions Trophy winning team like Roger Twose, Stephen Fleming, Chris Harris and Craig MacMillan.

Then we have Jacob Oram in the top five ODI all-rounders list but here is when the statistics start to tell the true story.

Two of the most influential ODI players this country has had were Nathan Astle and Chris Cairns.

Their equivalents in the current team are Brendon McCullum and Oram, probably our most highly paid cricketers and thus meant to be world class performers. But they are far from it.

Astle averaged 35 at a 73 strike rate with 16 hundreds; McCullum is 28 at 88 and Read more…

Administrator Champions Trophy, New Zealand Blogs.CMDN.com, Brendon McCullum, Champions Trophy, Chris Cairns, Chris Harris, Craig MacMillan, Cricket, Cricket Blogs, Daniel Vettori, Grant Elliott, Jacob Oram, Jesse Ryder, Kyle Mills, Martin Guptill, Nathan Astle, New Zealand, ODI, Roger Twose, Ross Taylor, Shane Bond, Stephen Fleming

There has been some furious debate about the wretched performances of the New Zealand team in Sri Lanka this week - we really were dreadful with the bat against Sri Lanka and India. Flat. Woeful. Inept.

The usual “sack them all”, “bring the young blokes in”, “unprofessional”, “Moles is crap”, “overpaid”, “no ticker”, “Kane Williamson for president” calls have been made by observers this week, but the reality is that the best players are probably there.

However, we have now lost 7 of our last 8 ODIs to Australia, India and Sri Lanka so the side should not be beyond reproach. Given the top order batting on display this week, some confident swinging of the willow from Son of Rodney Redmond could have been a worthwhile inclusion for the looming Champions Trophy. I am a genuine Maccaphiliac so I would have Craig McMillan straight back in there if he could be swayed. The records of Michael Papps, Jamie How, Scott Styris and Peter Fulton are also within cooee of the players that are in the team at present.

Of course, the Trophy squad is already named and none of the blokes above is there. Of the limited options that are on the table, I think Gareth Hopkins, Mr Grittiness, is due a start. Jacob Oram continues to wrestle with some batting demons that he will surely shake sometime soon. Brendon McCullum’s had one ton and 15 half-centuries in his career but the average of 28.07 lags How, Chris Cairns and even Mathew Sinclair at the moment. He’d be back down the Read more…

Administrator New Zealand Brendon Diamanti, Brendon McCullum, Champions Trophy, Chris Cairns, Daniel Vettori, Daryl Tuffey, Gareth Hopkins, Grant Elliott, Ian Butler, Jacob Oram, Jamie How, Jeetan Patel, Jesse Ryder, Kyle Mills, Martin Guptill, Mathew Sinclair, Michael Papps, Nathan McCullum, Neil Broom, New Zealand, Peter Fulton, Ross Taylor, Scott Styris, Shane Bond, South Africa, Sri Lanka, T20

After the dreadful attack on New Zealand’s current cricketing nemesis - Sri Lanka - in Lahore, the United Arab Emirates made strides toward a much more significant position in the world of cricket. Earlier this year The Guardian even went as far as saying: “The Gulf states could become a new home for cricket.” Seen as a neutral safehouse for the sport, Dubai is already home to the ICC’s headquarters and, along with nearby Abu Dhabi and Sharjah, looks set to become a venue of choice for any and all relocated international cricketing fixtures. But away from the piles of UAE dirhams (aka “sheikh cash”), there is an untelevised form of the game: the Middle East’s interpretation of BYC. Given the state of the terrain, it would be taking the mickey to describe it as “grassroots cricket” although in effect that’s what it is. The Beige Brigade’s Arabian Gulf ambassador went along for a frolic of backyard cricket, Abu Dhabi-style recently. Here is his report.

Basically the UAE has a massive population of Indian and Pakistani workers, mainly involved in construction and services such as drivers, tea boys, cleaners, and so on.

The drivers at work caught wind that I was a Kiwi and hit me up about my thoughts on the world’s best cricketer…which I told them was Jeetan Patel, closely followed by Grant Elliott. Blank response. However, I quickly made a lot of new friends when I corrected my mistake and mentioned the word “Tendulkar”.

One of them asked if I wanted to play cricket with them, and I agreed. I followed my acceptance up with some standard western cricket banter: “I’m going to tear you a new eye hole” and “I’m going to knock your block off” - that sort of thing. I was met with not one smile…and no retort. Odd.

Saturday morning gameday arrived. Jerry (our main driver) told me to meet him at a petrol station on the main road. I was instructed to follow him to the ground as apparently it was quite difficult to find. Easily the understatement of the year. Jerry proceeded to drive to the back blocks of Abu Dhabi…past the industrial estate and into a new development of villas, all unfinished Read more…

Administrator UAE Abu Dhabi, Blogs.CMDN.com, Cricket, Cricket Blogs, Dubai, Grant Elliott, ICC, Jeetan Patel, Kiwi, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, UAE, United Arab Emirates