New Zealand

When New Zealand were floored at Lord’s

In post match analysis, many people have been saying that they thought Graeme Swann was going to be key and marvelling that he didn’t get a bowl. Yes, that’s true, but let’s put this in perspective: Steven Finn didn’t get a bowl either.

James Anderson took 2-23 and Stuart Broad took 7-44. As new ball spells go, these are adequate.

It sounds odd, but people sometimes undervalue bowling performances like this, particularly once the excitement has worn off and a few of the details have been forgotten. The innings is either described in terms of the batting side collapsing or the results are diminished by talk of helpful conditions. But while destructive bowling in unhelpful conditions is undeniably admirable, there’s something really special about dismissing a side for 68. You’ll be lauded if you dismiss the opposition for twice that and the difference between those two scores speaks of the standards you set yourself.

The TV highlights were pretty much the entire day’s play, but yet they still felt very much like highlights. The wickets were interspersed with dozens of similar deliveries which just happened to beat the edge, rather than catch it. Many swing bowlers have picked up five wickets when the ball’s doing something, but only the best ones make it seem unavoidable.

Stuart Broad ruins our afternoon

We had it all planned out. We were going to cycle up Mow Cop and then, when we got home, we’d ‘refuel’ with our feet up while watching what promised to be the business end of the New Zealand innings. We’d be exhausted and would therefore be able to sit watching TV contentedly without feeling like we should be doing something else. Flawless, guilt-free self-indulgence was in the offing.

We timed it almost perfectly wrong.

Within 30 seconds of our return, the TV was on. It was the adverts. And then it was still the adverts. This was an unusually long ad break. Maybe it was the fall of a wicket. Oh, wait, maybe it was drinks. It was about the right time – an hour into the afternoon session.

It wasn’t the drinks break.

The hard-fought fifty and the quick fifty

Players are always talking about the brand of cricket they’re looking to play, trying to make it sound like there’s some lofty aesthetic ideal with which they should be associated. No-one ever talks about playing a squalid brand of cricket and more’s the pity. Squalid, low-scoring cricket that’s decided by fifties and run-outs and thick edges to third man is marvellous stuff.

Hard-fought fifties used to be a thing. This was because they contributed something valuable. However, in recent years, the hard-fought fifty has been replaced by the ‘missed opportunity’. The numbers are the same, but the perception is different. In many Test matches, 50 or 60 runs feels neither here nor there.

In this Test, 50 or 60 runs from someone could potentially swing the match. This struck us yesterday when Brendon McCullum was batting. People perceive McCullum as being a man well-suited to his time because he’s an attacking batsman (as if that’s a modern phenomenon), but he’s an attacking batsman who tends to make quick fifties rather than whopping great hundreds. Once upon a time, he would have regularly tipped the balance and secured New Zealand Test wins with his scores. In this era, the same contributions tend to be something more akin to light relief. They don’t affect the story. They’re just pleasant distractions for a short period of time.

We rather like the fifty taking centre stage. More of this kind of thing.

Watchful batting and watchable batting

We generally approve of England’s somewhat one-dimensional approach to top order batting. However, the fact that it’s highly appropriate for the current era doesn’t mean it’s always the best approach. Against equally patient bowling attacks, it can result in stand-offs less spectacular than when two cats spend three-quarters of an hour looking everywhere but at each other.

Many fielding sides have grown weary and moved to Plan B in the face of the numbing barrage of obduracy delivered by the England top order, but New Zealand aren’t like that – we’re not entirely sure they have a Plan B. The nature of their bowlers means Plan A can be delivered consistently. Cut from the same hardwearing grey cloth as England’s batting line-up, the Kiwi bowling attack doesn’t scythe through batting orders, but nor does it try to.

Reactive batting

What do you do in the face of this? Fight lukewarm water with lukewarm water?

While it’s comforting to see your nation’s cricketing representatives taking their job seriously, sometimes you need a bit of irresponsibility to open a match up. Not too much; just a touch. In fact just enough to keep full-blown, overcompensatory irresponsibility at bay (Nick Compton, we’re looking at you).

There are times when a little proactivity is required, but Kevin Pietersen is the only upper order England batsman prone to trying to set his own field. The others play according to what they are presented with.

Today, a slow outfield reduced the likelihood of boundaries and run-scoring was further stymied by the fact that this allowed more fielders to be placed saving singles. So perhaps today wasn’t the day for proactivity. Perhaps watchfulness was the correct approach and 160-4 is less underwhelming than it seems. Perhaps open-ended closing paragraphs are unsatisfactory.

Coverage of the attack on Jesse Ryder

If you haven’t already seen, Jesse Ryder is in an induced coma after being assaulted. He has a fractured skull.

We aren’t going to write too much about this, because the site is the wrong tone for that kind of news and therefore it just doesn’t seem appropriate. For similar reasons, we’d like to ask that news outlets refrain from using Twitter updates instead of actual quotes when reporting on this story. It’s a habit they’ve got into when covering cricket, but sport can accommodate the throwaway nature of a tweet far more comfortably.

We’ve read several reports of the Ryder incident which have republished tweets, such as this one from the official New Zealand Cricket Twitter feed:

The whole NZC team’s thoughts are with @dijaryder this morning.

— BLACKCAPS (@BLACKCAPS) March 27, 2013

It really undermines the message when you see the stupid Twitter handle. Plus, it just doesn’t seem sufficiently earnest to use Twitter at all. When players tweet that their thoughts are with him, it almost feels like an advert for their compassion because they’re broadcasting their feelings, rather than sending them more directly.

We’re sure that’s not the intention; it’s just the nature of the medium – which is precisely why it’s better to keep that jarring tonal shift away from news reports.

The barometer says England never looked like winning

Talk of an England win has been unjustifiably common during this Test. You never know what’s likely to happen in a match, but you can tailor conversation according to likelihood and at no point has an England victory seemed probable. Even talking about how they could possibly engineer a winning situation from the difficult positions they’ve found themselves in has been to remain wilfully blind to reality. A draw was appearing a fairly lofty aim from quite early on.

We’re fond of saying that averages only tell you what has already happened and that certainly applies here. Brendon McCullum only averages 30-odd with the bat, but he’s made England miserable all series without reaching three figures. Peter Fulton’s average has only reached the thirties thanks to a hundred in each innings of this match, but that kind of a contribution is a great deal more meaningful in terms of the series than what Ian Bell did against Pakistan in 2006.

We’re increasingly feeling like Ian Bell is a kind of barometer of form for England. We often talk about a team winning when one particular player performs well, but when Ian Bell plays badly, England are terrible. Or is it the other way round? It’s almost as if he responds to the pervading air of underachievement and thinks: “Right, time for eight off 89 balls.”

Bell’s still in, of course, but his obduracy seems less like resilience and more like the foreshadowing of a collapse – a contributory factor, even, if it brings unwarranted nervousness to the young batsmen who follow him.

Good luck to Bell and good luck to England, because they’ll need it. Whatever their averages, New Zealand’s bowlers have threatened England’s batsmen almost all series.

Two-metre Peter from New Zealand

He has one of our favourite nicknames in international cricket, so we’re secretly slightly pleased that Peter Fulton scored a hundred against England because it means he should get a few more matches. Set against that is the fact that he was averaging 23 before the first day’s play, so you can’t say it was a particularly good day for England after opting to bowl.

There have been worse insertions, but ‘insertion’ is a noun which covers some unsavoury concepts, so that’s not saying much. That said, wiser men than us have highlighted the fact that drop-in pitches such as this often get flatter as the match wears on, which doesn’t bode particularly well for the weekend’s entertainment. Or maybe England were just crap and wickets will tumble when they come to bat.

However things pan out, Peter Fulton didn’t put a foot wrong. And with seven of them at his disposal, that means he’s still got plenty of room for manoeuvre.

Why are we goading Tlaloc?

You see what happens? You see what happens? This is what happens. This is what happens when you goad Tlaloc, the Aztec rain god who loves Test cricket.

Tlaloc has really been looking forward to the series between New Zealand and England, but then he found out about the schedule and flipped out.

“Four days between Tests?” said Tlaloc. “We’ll see about that.”

He’d been planning on holding out just a few more days before ending the drought that has bedevilled North Island but when he found out that the gap between the second and third Tests was again just four days, the same as between the first and second Tests, he moved things forwards.

Tlaloc likes to have time to dissect one Test match and then some more time to anticipate the next.

New Zealand opt to bowl and then bowl

Some believe that Brendon McCullum’s decision to bowl in Wellington was partly as a result of his decision to bat and then bowl on the first morning of a Test against South Africa at the start of the year. If so, he’s an idiot.

The other alternatives are (1) that it was a reasonable decision that was in no way vindicated by his bowlers, who may as well have been bowling in wellingtons as in Wellington or (2) that England batted well.

Bearing in mind that Jonathan Trott and Nick Compton both scored hundreds, maybe it’s the kind of pitch on which steady, watchful batsmen score runs, in which case it probably wasn’t wise to insert England with their top three.

It’s not so much that Trott enjoys batting – which is what everyone always says about him. It’s more that he enjoys being at the crease. He’s perfectly happy to deny himself many of the more enjoyable aspects of batting if it will allow him to be at the crease for longer.

Trott will be sleeping well, not because he has scored a hundred, but because he knows he will be at the crease from the first ball in the morning. As far as he’s concerned, life is perfect.

For his part, Brendon McCullum is probably enduring a nightmare in which he sees a double-headed coin spinning through the air shortly after he has called ‘heads’.

Hamish Rutherford turned it round through caffeine and beer

There’s a lesson for everyone here. Hamish Rutherford has just middled we don’t know how many deliveries for four through the covers in one of those clean, brutal innings you can’t help but admire. And yet a year ago, he couldn’t even get a game for Otago. How did he turn it around?

“There were a few dark times, things go through your head. But I started working in a coffee shop and doing some bar work and started to find more enjoyment out of playing cricket as opposed to looking at it solely as a job.”

You see – coffee and beer is the route to success. Or maybe the lesson is that motivation can be forged through having a really shit job. Either way, something for us all to cling to there.

On a slow pitch with little movement, Hamish Rutherford has looked magic. There’s a great deal more to Test batting than that, but it doesn’t apply in this match.