New Zealand Like Dumb Sheep

Ross Taylor made 45

New Zealand won the toss and batted. The pitch was dry, took spin but played well inside the predictable range. The cricket was boring, mostly pointless and lacked intelligence, especially the last half hour.

I could leave the post at that and be entirely accurate but a number of things about the day's play were annoying and draw me into comment. Ross Taylor's batting for one and the inability of the Kiwi batsmen to realise that sooner of later you have to do more than survive. Fielding their strongest side for a long time and with Vettori at seven and van Wyck at eight, what was required was a solid foundation and then middle order batsmen who could push on. Instead, Daniel Flynn batted into the second session, adding 97 with Martin Guptil at little more than two an over and then spooned a catch to point to a ball he didn't need to play. McCullum blazed for forty minutes and then thumped Roach straight to mid off.

By tea, New Zealand had their foundation at 2-159, with Guptil a painful 73 not out but doing a job.

In the last session, Taylor played a series of fine off side drives to move into the thirties by drinks but that was all she wrote. Sunil Narine, who picked up his first Test wicket earlier with Flynn, returned in the last hour. His length and pace in his earlier spells had been too short and too quick. Now, in the last hour, he slowed down, gaining loop and drift and much more turn. The five or six people in the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium sat quietly. Taylor, in particular, played each ball as if would explode, moving well across to the off side to try and keep the ball down. It was an ill thought out response to some good bowling. By doing so, he was playing right into Narine's strength and he constantly peppered the close in field with half chances. Guptil, on the other hand, played from leg stump to mid off, trusting any inside edge would fall dead onto a pad well ahead of his bat. Taylor would thump the odd short ball but always straight to the two men set deep either side of square leg.

With half an hour to go, the ploy of scoring slowly but staying safe came undone when first Taylor and then Guptil expired to Narine. Taylor tried to pull a ball which wasn't short enough, perhaps tired of playing the ball off the back foot perilously close to Keiron Powell at short leg and it took the gloves, his pad and then leg stump. Some might say unlucky but it smacked of a man without a plan. How often must Ross Taylor make starts and see them as contributions. Six hundreds and fifteen half centuries is a poor conversion rate for a man of his promise.

Of course promise seems to have been New Zealand's catch cry for some time. In Australia, promise might get you into the state side and rarely into a Baggy Green cap but it doesn't keep you there.

Martin Guptil unhappy with himself

If New Zealand's cricket was dumb, it got dumber when Neil Wagner was sent out as night watchman. As Taylor was at the crease and the following batsman Kane Williamson was too new to ask, the decision must have been John Wright's to make. The pitch was fine and with a good spinner operating, a batsman should have been sent out to bat. The ball that spins is more of a danger to the tail than a recognised batsman. Wagner survived but twice refused singles on the last ball of an over and denied Guptil protection. Guptil, standing on the top step and knocking on the three figure door, had spent six hours contemplating his celebrations. He has twice scored Test hundreds and whilst a hundred is a hundred, tons against Zimbabwe and Bangladesh come at a heavily discounted price. It was then, three runs from his hundred and after surviving close lbw shots and spurious appeals for caught behind and doing the job that was asked of him ... it was then that his brain exploded and as he crouched on the pitch, head in hands lest he should drop any more bits of it, Narsingh Deonarine held the catch at deep mid on which Guptil had put there. Earlier in the day, he had thumped Narine over long on, so perhaps it was his intention to do the same and raise his bat a hero.

It didn't work out.

Dumb, dumb cricket.

Williamson came in anyway and looked entirely comfortable and the Kiwis had lost two wickets in a couple of overs to end the day even instead of on top. Did I mention it was dumb cricket?

Sunil Narine took 3-73

Darren Sammy's captaincy I usually support but it was hard to understand how little he used Marlon Samuels and Deonarine. Perhaps he thought too much of the same might weaken Narine's ability to lure the batsmen. Not taking the new ball - heavily criticised by the usual throng of opinion heavy former West Indies players in the commentary box - was the right one and earned him two wickets but bowling Assad Fudadin in the last hour and for the first time in Tests, seemed odd, as at that stage he had not used Deonarine. Still, he marshaled his troups well and was constantly making changes in the field and rotating his bowlers about the task. New Zealand never felt compelled to break away because he kept the pressure on. He was performing under the gaze of the former captain, Chris Gayle but if it worried him, it didn't show.

Narine caused no end of worry to the Kiwis in the one day series and now he has added Ross Taylor to the list of batsmen who think he sending death threats down the pitch. Strange how things have changed in the Caribbean when the last three good things in the West Indies bowling resources have been spinners. Stranger is the lack of bodies in a ground with two decent sized stands, a good pitch and the whole place named after one the greatest to have ever strutted one the world cricket stage.

The place was empty.

Then again, so was New Zealand's play.