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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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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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…

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» Inaugural match thrills 50,000 crowd in Bangalore
» Duminy’s unbeaten 99 stuns Royal Challengers

There were 30,000 inside the Estádio Nacional in Lisbon on September 4, 1955, when Sporting drew 3-3 with Partizan Belgrade. There was no glitzy opening ceremony or a global TV audience of more than half a billion when the European Cup got under way, but more than half a century on, Lalit Modi hopes that the Champions League Twenty20 will revolutionise cricket in the same way that Gabriel Hanot’s brainchild did club football.

Close to 50,000 watched the opening game at the Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore, and after kung-fu-fighting Shaolin monks, a laser show and Shaggy of In The Summertime fame had primed the crowd, the hometown Royal Challengers, without Kevin Pietersen, were ambushed by a dazzling unbeaten 99 from JP Duminy, the hero of last year’s MCG Test. Henry Davids, Justin Ontong and Ryan Canning kept the strike ticking over for the Cape Cobras, and Duminy did the rest as the Royal Challengers’ slow-bowling duo of Anil Kumble and Roelof van der Merwe were taken for 69 in eight overs. Kumble dropped a tough caught-and-bowled chance when he had 74, but otherwise, it was an accomplished innings.

The Royal Challengers’ innings was built around half-centuries from Robin Uthappa and New Zealand’s Ross Taylor. Charl Langeveldt had given the visitors the perfect start, having Jacques Kallis caught behind, but with catches going down in the murky atmosphere and lofted hits falling into gaps, Uthappa and Rahul Dravid wrested the initiative.

Langeveldt went off with a jarred shoulder after dropping a catch and in the final stages, his team-mates had no answer to Taylor’s aggression. Monde Zondeki and Rory Kleinveldt bowled far too many full tosses and Taylor (53 off 24 balls) blazed away for 33 in the last two 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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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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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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Since its beginning in 1998 the Champions Trophy has long been the poor cousin to the World Cup. Conceived as a cash cow for the ICC, it has suffered from continual changes of team numbers, format and more than its fair share of bad weather, dodgy pitches and poor organisation.

The perception of the tournament among cricket fans of being a side show may be changing though. With the World Cup increasingly being filled with ‘cannon fodder’ nations to give it a more global look, the premier ODI tournament has become an arduous marathon of often lopsided results. With so much cricket on offer with the rise of 20/20, fans are increasingly looking for quality not quantity.

This time around the Champions Trophy has been trimmed to the top 8 sides in the world. It is the lowest number of participants since the tournament began, and should present fans with a quality shootout that will give us a winner after only 16 days.

South African too has a tremendous history of successfully hosting major cricket tournaments. Their stable weather, excellent venues, quality pitches and colourful crowds will add up to a tremendous occasion, which should inspire TV audiences around the world and make this the most watched Champions Trophy yet.

GROUP A

India the front runners with a rebuilding Australia and ever dangerous Pakistan fighting over the second qualifying spot. A virtual second string West Indies team should have too many Read more…

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The Black Caps will need a remarkable reversal of form if they are to emerge as serious contenders in the Champions Trophy and reverse their tumbling world status.

They arrive in South Africa from a morale-sapping series in Sri Lanka where they failed to be competitive and their world ranking fell from fourth to sixth.

While ever-consistant spinner Daniel Vettori, backed by the return of speedster Shane Bond, ensures there is some fight in the field, the Black Caps fragile batting leaves them vulnerable.

When opener Jesse Ryder fell for a second-ball duck in their must-win pool match against India in the triangular tournament in Sri Lanka it ignited the familiar scene of a top-order batting collapse.

After being white-washed by Sri Lanka in the preceeding two-test series, New Zealand had looked to build for the Champions Trophy by lifting their game in the ODIs.

But they crashed out of the tournament and failed to bat out 50 overs in back-to-back hidings by India and Sri Lanka.

“In terms of putting up results, we’ve just not learned anything on tour,” Vettori said as they packed up and prepared to head to South Africa.

“I know I sound like a broken record but we just didn’t put scores together, we didn’t bat as well as we could have.”

Against Sri Lanka, where they held the poisoned chalice of batting second at R. Premadasa Stadium, their quest for 217 ended at a limp 119 in the 37th over.

After that match coach Andy Moles said they were there to learn from the mistakes, 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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