So if i admit that Guptill is a failure at international level (which i don't), who is there to replace him, who WILL singlehandlely win a series for us? Or would you throw us back a few years when players were brought in for a series or two, failed and were dropped.
Guptill's issues are all mental (as flem pointed out, most of his technical deficiencies are due to a poor headspace) Ie, give him a decent run in the side and theres a good chance that he will come right.
No one will win a series single handedly for us, that's the entire point. If you look at the changes and transformation Taylor has gone through recently to increase the strike rate and consistency of his performances, he's betting on the idea that he doesn't need to hit 80 from 40 balls in order to get New Zealand into winning positions. A guy that was seen as heavily boundary dependent recently showed that he can still score at a reasonable clip, get himself a fifty and only hit one boundary.
You've got Williamson, McCullum and Taylor who are all showing a consistency of performance (median in the high 20s, approaching their average in the mid 30s). Ronchi is starting to develop some consistency and Anderson can be argued as a consistent success at late order hitting if he comes off 1 in 3 innings, the idea then is if he's coming off in 1 of 3 innings as a hitter and we've also got Ronchi, Nathan McCullum and Brendon McCullum capable of that job, we'll likely get that outcome ticked.
Ryder needs to find some more consistency in the one day side, but even in this series, he's put on several scores and has constantly put NZ into a good position to start off with, he's turned the strike over, generally found early boundaries and there is enough there to suggest that he's not going to be dependent on the four ball to find his runs.
Why are South Africa so successful in world cricket in recent years? Why do they never drift outside the top four and spend most of their time in the top two?
Guptill is getting worse at international cricket the longer his career goes on, all the hallmarks of a guy who probably has a stress disorder and just can't get his headspace over the line in the international game and unlike players like Trescothick and Trott, he's not got any history of consistent performance to fall back on. I think it's almost cruel to select the guy knowing how hard he's probably taking these failures.