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…

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In 1998, NZ only makes the tournament after beating Zimbabwe in a last-ball minnow thriller in Bangladesh. In that match, Zimbabwean skipper Alistair Campbell makes a ton but is overshadowed by Deadball’s favourite Chris Harris, who clobbers a four off the last ball to win the match - his score of 37 from just 21 balls is the decisive innings after NZ is all but dead and buried at 216/5 in the 47th over chasing 260.

The win against the Zimbos was the tournament highlight for patriots as NZ was shot out for 188, and duly KO’d by Sri Lanka in the 42nd over of their run chase. Some dared to dream when the men in blue were 5/3, before portly Arjuna Ranatunga saved the day with an unbeaten 90 punctuated with just 8 fours and a seemingly endless succession of waddling singles and trotted twos.

>> Most outrageous selections: Mark Bailey.

The Year 2000 is the high watermark for NZ one-day cricket - the springtide, if you will, given it was played in October. This win gave the 2000 team some ammunition for their pub arguments against the “1980s cricket mafia” that pervades the game in NZ. The images of a slightly creepy-looking coach David Trist on the balcony, manager Jeff Crowe sporting a magnificent pair of Oakley frogskins, and Chris Cairns going berserk are indelibly etched into any Kiwi cricket fan’s mind. I was very, very late for work that morning.

Having thumped Zimbabwe and squeaked past Pakistan in the semifinal, New Zealand chases down India’s 264 in the final over, sealing a mind-blowing win with two balls to spare. Cairns, saddled with a knee injury, ended 102 not out, and the architect of our greatest ever one-day innings. The win in Nairobi earned the team a huge amount of respect - as The Guardian wrote soon after: “Last week its Men in White, a side that has about as many big names as an episode of Stars in Their Eyes, won the ICC Knockout Trophy in Kenya…The Kiwis have defied Read more…

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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…

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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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