33rd Match - New Zealand v Pakistan

[stephen]

This keeps the tournament interesting.

Good to see Babar continuing his form. Class player who will go on to be a Pakistani great.

 

[SteveNZ]

i wanted us to play the 4 reserves against afghanistan for precisely this situation - you need them with a game or two under the belt if someone is injured or terrible. anyway it's time for nicholls and maybe blundell.

anyway on saturday we learn the gap between our current 3/4/5 standard team and the top 3 of india/aus/eng. i suspect it's rather large.

Clearly, they are subscribing to the model that worked during the 2015 World Cup. Issue with that being, all of our guys had form from memory going into 2015. And the reserves were either world class (Mills) or a semi-proven performer (McClenaghan, Milne, Nathan McCullum). Now we have a plethora of guys out of form, and reserves who are not near world class and are now rusty.

And yes, I think we are about to find out how huge the chasm is between us, as probably the 4th/5th best side in the world. India and Australia have very few weaknesses and are really carrying no one (apart from you could say spin and Khawaja for Australia), where we are swiss cheese around our best 2 batters and a semi-performing bowling attack.

 

[Bahnz]

btw, how is NRR calculated?

(Total number of runs scored/total number of overs batted) -
(Total number of runs conceded/total number of overs bowled)

 

[straw man]

Outplayed by Pakistan - Babar great and Shaheen very impressive when he gets it right like today.

Went to bed when Williamson got out and surprised... stunned actually, to see Neesham and De Grandhomme dug in and got us to 237. A shame Neesh didn't hit the penultimate ball for six too and get the hundred. Both these all-rounders have been impressive which is massive when they didn't have a lot of career or form behind them to suggest it.

Still, batting frailties evident all tournament finally cost us. Can't do much about Guptill's form. Dead obvious to drop Munro though - not doing that is taking Stead far past conservative or sensible selection into pure stubbornness and denial. Latham's poor form is unfortunate (though I didn't realise how bad his average is over the last 18 months until someone posted it) - looks shorn of confidence and has fiddled edges to the keeper twice now. When Blundell, entirely uncapped and unproven thanks to NZ selectors' lack of planning, was picked in this squad we all crossed our fingers that Latham would stay fit the whole tournament. Not looking so critical now - a punt on Blundell looks tempting though the selectors would never do it. Latham is still a class player somewhere in there so gotta have faith he'll turn it around.

 

[BeeGee]

Congrats Pakistan, excellent game. England must be shitting themselves.

NZ saying they got it wrong by not playing Sodhi is all well and groovy, but it ignores the "83 for 5" elephant in the room. Is Nicholls edging every delivery in the nets? Does Munro have pictures of Williamson and Stead in a three way with Guptill's wife? I don't get it.

 

[Athlai]

Was also unaware Shaheen was a ****ing spinner. The spinner call is ridiculous, it isn’t why we lost that match.

 

[mr_mister]

If only you still had the bad boy of NZ cricket Jesse Ryder

 

[Bahnz]

Sounds like a disappointing performance. The whole Munro thing is ridiculous. We all knew he was a spud at the conclusion of last summer. And yet apparently one janky 50 scored in a zero pressure situation against arguably the weakest bowling attack in the competition was enough to make him a lock for most (if not all) of the group phase. There's loyalty of selection and then there's throwing good money after bad, and Munro clearly fits into the latter.

Munro isn't the problem though. Swap him out for Nicholls and things like immediately healthier. The real issue is Guptill. We just can't bank on Kane and Ross to score 150+ between them every game. We need Guptill to stand up if we're to have a chance. If he can't find form then we won't make it past the semis. Latham...it's really hard to know what to do there. Do we really debut Blundell in a situation like this? I don't think so, but again if Latham can't find form then we're not going to progress.

So for me (and with some trepidation) Munro for Nicholls is the only change I'd make for the Australia game.

Btw, the World Cup is now starting to look seriously fantastic. Heading into the last week and a half, there's literally only 1 or 2 games that have nothing riding on them. God bless England's mid-tournament meltdown, and long may it continue.

 

[Athlai]

Last time we debuted Blundell in a hard situation he scored a ton at the Basin

 

[Bahnz]

Last time we debuted Blundell in a hard situation he scored a ton at the Basin

I would disagree that a debut on his home ground against a trash WI side is equivalent to a World Cup semi-final or an NZ v Australia game at Lords.

 

[Howsie]

If only we had taken Tim Seifert over as we should have, both Munro and Latham could be replaced in one swoop......

 

[Grasshopper]

Had a feeling Pakistan would beat us. Stead's selection stubbornness and Williamson's well documented aversion to bowling our spinners really bit us on the arse. And I still can't understand why we batted first on that pitch. Plenty to worry about going forward. I am not a happy camper.

 

[Flem274*]

Seifert is going to be a quality bat but he's a dollar 1.01 to drop the world cup

 

[Athlai]

I would disagree that a debut on his home ground against a trash WI side is equivalent to a World Cup semi-final or an NZ v Australia game at Lords.

286-6 wasnt looking great tbf.

 

[straw man]

Since we all love the 1992 meme comparisons, Rod Latham scored 136 runs from 7 innings at 19.42 that tournament, highest score 60 against South Africa.

Wonder if his vastly more talented son can beat that, currently sitting on just 27 runs from 5 innings at 6.75.

 

[Prince EWS]

Last time we debuted Blundell in a hard situation he scored a ton at the Basin

I would disagree that a debut on his home ground against a trash WI side is equivalent to a World Cup semi-final or an NZ v Australia game at Lords.

He was also debuted in a type of cricket he was actually good at. A decent innings in a warmup game doesn't change the fact that he's been a despicably bad player in this format; Latham could get another ten consecutive ducks looking like Chris Martin before I'd consider making that particular swap unless he started keeping like a complete dunce as well.

 

[ankitj]

Man itd be hilarious if Pakistan beat India in the sf/final. I'd be annoyed too but it would almost be worth it to witness the reaction here in India.

u mad?

 

[Moss]

Congrats Pakistan, excellent game. England must be shitting themselves.

NZ saying they got it wrong by not playing Sodhi is all well and groovy, but it ignores the "83 for 5" elephant in the room. Is Nicholls edging every delivery in the nets? Does Munro have pictures of Williamson and Stead in a three way with Guptill's wife? I don't get it.

Looking at this game in isolation, Pakistan probably had the better of the (pace) bowling conditions and bowled and fielded superbly - the Taylor dismissal in particular, so with just about any lineup you feel NZ would still be 83 for 5. The reason people are going on about the Sodhi omission is that Kane actually read the pitch correctly (stated it was a used surface), won a good toss but totally negated that advantage by proceeding to leave out the second spinnwr. Very strange from the same skipper who didn't mind playing 3 spinners at Nagpur in that world T20 game against India.

In the larger scheme of things, yes it's shocking that Nicholls hasn't had a single game to date.

 

[OverratedSanity]

u mad?

Well Pakistan won, so yes of course.

 

[The Hutt Rec]

I know this is an insanely adventurous concept, but if we give Blundell a game or two and it doesn’t work out, we could always ... recall Latham?!

I think it’s definitely worth a try, Blundell could go great as he did in the warm-ups, and the way Latham is playing, a little while in the nets is probably going to be more beneficial for him than his current mediocre efforts at the cease, as well.