Kiwis - The Only Way Is Up

Hard times in
South Africa

Apart from their A-380 diving into the Indian Ocean on the way back to the Shaky Isles or perhaps having to live next door to an Australian, its hard to image how things could get any worse for the New Zealand cricket team.

Granted, being smeared across South African pitches is a fate most international teams could suffer at the moment, it was the manner in which the Kiwi batsmen capitulated which was so degrading for a nation who have raised "little man syndrome" to an art form. South Africa only had to use six new balls to thump New Zealand twice by an innings, carving through them like late Christmas turkeys. At Capetown and then Port Elizabeth, the Kiwi first innings batting was worse than embarrassing. The kindest thing to be said about the bowlers was they toiled but only in the same way an Irish Setter keeps chasing parked cars.

Make no mistake, this is a powerful South African side, back home after a forgettable tour of Australia where the hosts had the better of the series. When it counted however, South Africa played the decisive cricket and won and have come home for softer series against New Zealand and Pakistan to confirm and strengthen their hold on the number one spot in Test cricket. They couldn't have done more in these two Tests.

All of the batsmen feasted. All of the bowlers were far to good. With AB deVilliers keeping and Kallis still able to bowl fifteen overs an innings for a wicket or two, they continued with their deep batting policy. When your first three bowlers are as good as Steyn, Philander and Morkel, this presents no problem. The Imran Tahir experiment was consigned to the lab floor after he returned from Australia with the roof of his mouth sunburnt and the aging Robin Petersen has taken with both hands a second opportunity offered as dotage looms. Much was loudly stated in the preliminaries to the series with Australia - one which offered the hosts a fast track return to their former glory - of the quality and venom of the South African quick attack but it was the quiet word to curators which largely left audiences dissatisfied with batting bonanzas on decks which offered little in the way of a contest. While everyone looked to "ooh" and "aah" at the quicks, South Africa's main danger - that deep batting line up - managed Australia's bowled better than any rotation system.

What of a New Zealand side that could only keep their opponents on the field for barely seventeen sessions in a two Test series?

McCullum is the man for the job

Whilst Ross Taylor sits at home and bores anyone who'll listens with I told you so's, the result would hardly have been different or less damning under his captaincy. Certainly the fall out from his sacking showed in a side dumbstruck by circumstance but the tour to South Africa may be the broken eggs from which Brendon McCullum and the boffins in Auckland can make their omelette. New Zealand hasn't reached this low ebb because of the current captain but because of it two former captains. Taylor and the endlessly morose Dan Vettori, bought their love of occupation without action to the captaincy but in their time achieved very little. They hoped for attrition without applying abrasive surfaces to the task. Both led their sides with no passion and calls for patience, hoping to win cricket matches by not losing.

Some would say this is a good policy when you are immeasurably the weaker side but try telling young men that. Instead of allowing the traditional Kiwi bristle to come to bear, they turned the last generation of young men into aging geriatrics whose best effort was to stay awake longer than the other fellow and therefore get the hot chocolate before bedtime.

McCullum has his work cut out for him but at least he brings positivism to the role. When he won the toss in Capetown, many in his position would have sent the opposition in hoping for a successful first morning but mostly to hide his batsmen from Steyn and Co for a while longer. He didn't and New Zealand were all out before lunch but it was the sort of strong leadership his side needs. His biggest battle will be facing up to the challenge of the effect has on his own robust and at times all to direct batting style. Here, he batted with chains around his ankles and a weakness to spin which has been seen in him before. Petersen got him three times in his four innings in what was an application of knowledge of your opponent by Graeme Smith.

Brownlie was NZ's best

Dean Brownlie was up to this and his failures were New Zealand's worst days. His second innings century in Capetown, with the the bowlers all over his team like angry bees on an adventurous school boy, was a measured response by a Test match player. Born in Australia, he is too old to be a prodigy but has played enough quality cricket in enough different places for his promises not to be fulfilled. He brings more than his batting to the team. He dislikes losing and will stand and fight. Unlike many of his contemporaries in the Black Caps, he has been batting in different forms, in different countries and different conditions, all of which gives him a better understanding of what is required.

BJ Wattling returned to the side for this series, perhaps at the request of the skipper and he was New Zealand's only other batsman to take the game back to South Africa. Apart from a first ball duck on that dreadful morning in Capetown, he made runs batting with a tail that must have had Chris Martin as the batting coach. If Vettori does return to Test cricket, he will comfortably bat at seven behind Wattling and give the tail some spine.

Of the others, Kane Williamson is one to keep, despite failing in these Tests. At only 22 he has already had a lot of Test experience and has been asked to bat in the vexing No 3 position. New Zealand must be patient with him.

Martin Guptil worries no one. He has a limited range of shots and the only person he would make nervous at the anthems would be Phil Hughes. Such is the calamity, he can't be thrown away and may yet stand up more regularly but 661 runs at 24 in the second half of his Test career is hardly a compelling argument for his retention, especially as half of them came in just four digs in the Caribbean mid 2012.

The justifiable scapegoat must be Daniel Flynn who has fallen badly by the wayside. As he approaches fifty Test innings since his debut in 2008, he is yet to make a hundred. Worse still, he has more Test ducks than fifties and a batting average in the mid twenties. His pair at Port Elizabeth only occupied five deliveries, with footwork worse than a bunch of footballers dancing in drag. The twinkle in his eye four years ago against the West Indies had dulled to a slight pink glow before this series but was gone completely after the third afternoon at St George's Park. At 27, time is still on his side but for a man who has played no domestic cricket outside of New Zealand, its hard to imagine where he is going to build experiences that will bring him back.

Perhaps with the right management, Jesse Ryder might be worth considering but his problems may be to great for the system to overcome.

Of the bowlers, the enigmatic and troublesome Doug Bracewell is New Zealand's best and Trent Boult useful. There is no spin attack worthy of mention, including the leg spinner Astle who was left behind whilst the rest of his mates went to South Africa to play. New Zealand haven't had an attacking potency in the spin department since Doug's uncle John twirled them down in the 1980's. Shane Bond was the last Kiwi worthy of a mention when discussing real bowlers in Black Caps.

Jeremy Coney

You can only take to market the cattle you have but New Zealand have to re think their approach to the game. Frankly, they need to find the mongrel that made them so painfully competitive in the 1970's and 80's and perhaps the appointment of McCullum is a start in the right direction but it will take patience and a willingness to find small victories amongst massive defeats to keep things going forward. The leadership of Glenn Turner, Bevan Congdon and Jeremy Coney was the key element to success in that period. Without doubt, having a few a cricket studs like Richard Hadlee, Martin Crowe and Turner himself did no harm either but establishing a bird-flipped attitude to the opposition, synonymous with that chip on the shoulder that the average Kiwi on the street still has, is where revival will come from. With that attitude in place, players like Danny Morrison, John Wright and Ewan Chatfield performed way above their actual ability and New Zealand were a competitive outfit.

At the moment, even Zimbabwe would fancy a game against them.

New Zealand cricket authorities must get their players overseas for experience in England and the sub continent. They are too small a cricket playing nation to leave this responsibility to player agents and New Zealand first class cricket is nowhere near enough of a nursery to grow Test players. An old mate of mine, Joe Harrison, himself a wily off spinner who harassed batsmen into submission, captained in first class cricket in New Zealand and played with Richard Hadlee - an honour the great man usually reserved for himself. He loved the game and was as passionate a Kiwi as would be any Australians misfortune to meet after a Trans-Tasman loss. He hated Rugby and preferred the working class man's game of rugby league ("always spell it in lower case," Joe would insist). He once told me that the New Zealand cricket team were selected because they were the only eleven blokes in the country who couldn't play Rugby.

I hope he's wrong.