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Apr 04 2008
Love0

Hey, I made it in to the Dom-Post

By Cricket, NZ

Well, the Stuff.co.nz web site any­way (Hamish McDouall’s crick­et blog to be precise):

Here is my friend Dan, seeth­ing with vol­can­ic energy, about the Napier test:

“I’m still furi­ous about Sunday afternoon’s col­lapse, not because it was so unne­ces­sary (and not because I’d just texted a friend say­ing lit­er­ally “we won’t bat again in this game”) but because the day before a 19-year-old had bowled his heart out, and us in to a win­ning pos­i­tion, and the seni­or play­ers – the guys he should be look­ing up to and learn­ing from – showed him that he needn’t have bothered. They demon­strated once again that mediocrity and a “near enough is good enough” atti­tude will get you in this team and keep you there and that no amount of drive, com­mit­ment, tal­ent and spunk will prompt your team­mates to raise their game.

“Imagine if Southee had joined the Australian team – every­one around him would be driv­ing him to get bet­ter and achieve more. For the Black Caps he’s already good enough to be picked for as long as he wants.

“Where’s the motiv­a­tion going to come from? If McCullum’s out on Sunday is any­thing to go by it won’t be from the vice-captain. But then I’ve nev­er for­giv­en him for this: McCullum c Silva b Muralitharan 0(1)”

Now that’s writ­ing that bristles with so much fis­sion it could power Donetsk or oth­er indus­tri­al East European conurbations.

Cheers, Hamish.

Mar 06 2008
Love0

Pyjama Crimes

By Cricket, Sport

Regardless of the play­ers being poached, the inter­na­tion­al careers pre­ma­turely ended, the enorm­ous amounts of money dis­tort­ing the great and won­der­ful game , whatever…

This, dear read­er, is the reas­on why the Indian Cricket League must be defeated:

And, while we are on the sub­ject of the ICL here are a few mug­shots. Happy to be here?

Although any­thing that gets Adam Parore out of the coun­try should prob­ably be sup­por­ted. What say you?

Dec 15 2007
Love0

Getting too comfortable with losing

By black caps, Cricket, Sport

Daniel Vettori smiles at a press conference ahead of New Zealand's first one-dayer against Australia. © Getty ImagesBefore we get too far into this great Summer of 07–08 I want to express some con­cern at how easy young Vettori seems to be tak­ing defeat. He’s tak­ing it gra­ciously, mag­nan­im­ously and gen­er­ously to be sure. But he doesn’t look like he hates los­ing, like it eats away at him, cor­rod­ing his very soul.

In this he reminds me of anoth­er young cap­tain who was sup­posedly “the chosen one”, annoin­ted and appoin­ted with the full sup­port of the great minds at HQ. Taine Randell, we were told, had cap­tained every New Zealand age group rep­res­ent­at­ive rugby side and was pos­it­ively destined to be All Black cap­tain. And so he became.

Taine Randell (Cardiff, 1999)And with a win-draw-loss record of 12−1−9 we got pretty used to see­ing Taine giv­ing “full cred­it” to the oppos­i­tion and after a while it looked like it didn’t even hurt.

Dan Vettori’s win-loss record in inter­na­tion­als before tak­ing over the job per­man­ently from Stephen Fleming was a very cred­it­able 8 from 11. Since the Twenty20 World Cup, it has been P9 W2 L7.

Tomorrow we take on Australia again, this time in Sydney. And let’s hear no more about Tait’s sus­pect action. Of course, he chucks- but if we are going to worry about him then we should take a look at Kyle Mills and that is a bit too close to home.

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