Cricket

Let me take a moment to salute one of the great enter­tain­ers of the mod­ern game, Craig McMillan who has announced his retire­ment from all cricket.

McMillan launched him­self on the inter­na­tion­al scene in 1997 by hit­ting Shane Warne back over his head in the first over of his first test innings and nev­er took a back­ward step again dur­ing an inter­na­tion­al career that saw him score nearly 8,000 runs and take 77 wickets.

McMillan has cited health reas­ons as the primary cause of his retire­ment and he has always struggled with the debil­it­at­ing effects of dia­betes, often leav­ing the field for treat­ment and suf­fer­ing cramps and strains. Keeping a con­stant blood sug­ar level in the tough envir­on­ment of inter­na­tion­al crick­et (incess­ant tour­ing, hot weath­er, etc) must have been a chal­lenge and his struggle to con­trol his weight in recent years is test­amant to those difficulties.

I think, also, that McMillan’s prob­lems with con­cen­tra­tion (the “rush of blood to the head”) that pre­ven­ted him from achiev­ing all that his tal­ent and con­fid­ence allows can pos­sibly be blamed on his med­ic­al condition.

In any case, his enthu­si­asm will be missed; his com­mit­ment to the cause no mat­ter what state the game; and his genu­ine enjoy­ment at being out on the park. Tonight I’ll raise a cup of tea to McMillanus – bowl­er of boun­cers and hit­ter of sixes.

While most of New Zealand’s atten­tion is on France I will also be keep­ing an eye on South Africa and the first World Twenty20 (or is that 20Twenty?) Championship.

It’s been a long time between inter­na­tion­als for the Black Caps – long enough to almost for­get the heart­break of Kingston in April. Actually I may nev­er get over this par­tic­u­lar piece of insanity:

McCullum c Silva b Muralitharan 0(1)

Anyway, we’re on the telly again at often ridicu­lous hours of the day and play­ing a fairly ridicu­lous game. As I like to tell people: if Test Cricket is Shakespeare and One Day Cricket is Chekhov then Twenty20 is “Everybody Loves Raymond” but I’ll be watch­ing all the same.

And Fleming has announced his retire­ment from the One Day game and accep­ted his demo­tion as Captain of the Test side. I have mixed feel­ings about this (and the Bracewell-factor gen­er­ally) but I feel con­fid­ent that Vettori will do well con­sid­er­ing the example that Fleming has set for him.

From The Spin, The Guardian’s occa­sion­al crick­et e‑mail:

New Zealand

Suddenly, you quite fancy them. A lower-middle order of Jacob Oram and Brendon McCullum means they are nev­er out of the game; Shane Bond – assum­ing he does­n’t break down – could be the fast­est man in the com­pet­i­tion; and Stephen Fleming has regained the repu­ta­tion he lost in England in 2004 as the smartest cap­tain in the game. Lack of bowl­ing depth and the occa­sion­al tend­ency of the top order to go awol are both con­cerns, but the off-spinner Jeetan Patel could be one of the com­pet­i­tion’s unsung her­oes. And they will field like Lou Vincents. Very back­able dark horses.

One-day record since last World Cup: P88 W44 L39 T0 NR5
Last 10 matches: W5 L5

The stats are very inter­est­ing. I’ve always said that in One Day crick­et the best NZ can ever really expect is to win as many as we lose and we are just ahead of that over the last four years.

“All I ask for is a little con­sist­ency” say the pun­dits. Well, you can only be con­sist­ently win­ning or con­sist­ently los­ing and the first one isn’t real­ist­ic so I’ll take the glor­i­ous incon­sist­ency thanks.

But then again, all we need is sev­en wins in a row from March 17 and we are home free.

And the TAB has us at $7.00 with Australia at $2.75; South Africa $5.00 and India $8.50. I might get a piece of those odds come pay day.