All the talk is of New Zealand’s batting woes of late.

And with good reason. The performance of New Zealand’s top six in three of the four innings against Pakistan during the first two tests raised a pile of questions.

But what about the other half of the game?

New Zealand’s fast-medium trio - Shane Bond, Chris Martin and Iain O’Brien at Dunedin in the first test win, and Martin, O’Brien and Daryl Tuffey in Wellington - more than did their part.

They combined hostility with penetration against a Pakistani batting lineup which - teenage star Umar Akmal and captain Mohammad Yousuf apart - has flattered to deceive.

So all’s well in the seam department. But for how long?

Consider the ages of the incumbents and their current situations.

Bond is 34 and after a spectacular return to test cricket is now gone from the five-day side until at least the test against Bangladesh early in February.

Martin turned 35 yesterday and won’t be around for too much longer. He is targeting 200 test wickets and is up to 174, with four tests remaining this summer.

Allowing for good health and the desire remaining, he could be around for another year.

O’Brien is 33 and leaving for a new life in England at the end of the third test starting in Napier today.

Tuffey is 31 and resurgent, after a successful first test back from a five-year absence from the test game.

And then …

A word around the country with some of the first-class coaches came up with some Read more…

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What is the difference between Daniel Vettori and Brian Tamaki? The Black Caps do not bow when they approach Vettori . . . yet.

Whether it is by circumstance or Machiavellian design, the left-arm spinner has acquired enough power to dim the environmentally friendly and energy-efficient lights over Seddon Park.

He’s now a selector, the stand-in coach, the captain, a leading bowler and one of our best batsmen.

With former coach Andy Moles dispatched, Vettori’s grip on the reins is complete.

Even Brendon McCullum’s voice in the dressing rooms has been muted by his public demotion from the vice-captaincy.

The cricket community and the media seemed to be in unison over Moles’ departure.

No-one, it appeared, was willing to suggest a mutiny had taken place or player power was getting out of hand.

Less than a year into his three-year contract, former Warwickshire opener Moles walked the plank with barely a squeak - no doubt silenced, to an extent, by the size of his pay-out.

Before splashdown he meekly complained about not being given the time to improve, and he rejected the perception he was ill-equipped to take the national side forward.

Given he got the job only when several higher-profile candidates withdrew, criticism was directed at New Zealand Cricket for rushing into the appointment.

Moles’ fate had been sealed by a poor report card on which the country’s leading players questioned whether he was up to the task.

Some of the same players flexed their muscle earlier in the year, when they delayed signing their national contracts until they had clarity around whether the inbound Australian tour Read more…

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Why is it that a bloke who bowls barely 130km/h; doesn’t really do much with the ball; and plays for a team that at best is fourth in the world; is ranked the No 1 ODI bowler in the world?

Probably because Kyle Mills does the same sort of thing as did the previous No 1, Nuwan Kulasekara.

These two restore the values of basics in the ever-evolving game of cricket.

They hit immaculate line and length consistently. They don’t appear to over-complicate things with massive variation.

They prove that if you can get the ball in the right place often enough, you ask the batsman to take risks - something that even in today’s fast-scoring game they would rather avoid.

Mills has taken 159 wickets in 108 matches, a good return. His economy rate is not startling at 4.66 but still very good when you consider what it means if you extend his effort over 50 overs.

If you had five Kyle Mills, each bowling their 10 overs, then the average score by the opposition would be 233 - nowadays a score most teams would be quite happy chasing.

Mills’ record, however, looks really impressive when you see what he does on the subcontinent. In conditions that generally suit batting and which can be a seam bowler’s graveyard, his average is a super 19.34, his economy rate just 4.15.

All this has been achieved while generally operating in the opening and death overs when batsmen are looking to be aggressive. His record would be even more impressive if New Zealand had other bowlers more suited to the death.

It is Mills’ normal length that gives him this success. He is tall and can bowl into the Read more…

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Cricket abounds with theories, some valid, several spurious. A common one in the latter category states that captains have little role to play in limited overs cricket. This edition of the Champions Trophy has shown why such belief is balderdash.

It could be argued that since neither Ricky Ponting nor Daniel Vettori had a tangible role to play in the final, the importance of a captain has been exaggerated. But that is mistaking a one-off performance for leadership, which is what captaincy in cricket is all about.

Ponting had got only a single before an unplayable delivery from Kyle Mills hit his pads right in front of the stumps, while Vettori, sadly, did not even take the field. But who would deny that but for their presence and captaincy over the past couple of weeks, neither Australia nor New Zealand would have reached this far.

The cricketing ethos of Australia and New Zealand are a study in contrast, and how the captains of these two sides shaped the progress of their respective sides in this tournament (and I dare say, right through the past year) makes for one of the more fascinating stories in the contemporary cricket.

Vettori, who took over from the phlegmatic Stephen Fleming, has been able to infuse an ambition that was hitherto unimaginable in New Zealand cricketers. Richard Hadlee, the unrelenting wicket-taker of the 80s, remains an oddity. Hadlee was brilliant, but also a loner, and once he was gone, New Zealand cricket floundered.

For the better part of the last two decades, the Kiwis have been the “jolly good blokes” of international cricket. They have played well, especially at home, but have never Read more…

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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…

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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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For once Daniel Vettori’s worth to his team will not entirely be measured by his performance with bat, ball or as a cricket tactician.

What New Zealand needs most from their captain at R Premadasa Stadium tomorrow (2100 NZT) is Vettori to win the toss and choose to bat first against Sri Lanka in the opening match of their one-day international Tri-Series with India.

Statistics are ripe for manipulation but when Premadasa is involved the figures don’t lie: lose the toss, lose the game.

In the last 10 ODI matches at Sri Lanka’s premier day-night cricket venue, the team who bat with the sun on their backs, win with varying degrees of simplicity.

Once the sun sets, the ball can be unplayable as it swings and seams prodigiously - Pakistan’s two matches against Sri Lanka there last month a case in point.

Already 0-3 down in the five-match series, Pakistan’s Younis Khan ensured his side regained some respectability by dictating terms in the capital.

In the fourth match Pakistan amassed 321 for five; Sri Lanka a measly 175 in reply. Sri Lanka’s pace spearheads Lasith Malinga and Thilan Thushara both conceded 74 runs from their 10 overs; Pakistani medium pacer Iftikhar Anjum nabbed a career best five for 30 a couple of hours later.

Then, in the final dead rubber, Pakistan’s 279 was more than enough - Sri Lanka folded 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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