*Unofficial* New Zealand Black Caps Thread

[nzfan]

nice essay. i have a couple of quibbles but love your passion. i actually think jamieson is the most natural bowling talent of our main five. height, bounce, swing both ways and ever increasing pace. lockie too is a rare gem. i think the main trio are there not because they're once in a generation players but because they're older (career wise - only a few years between all bar wags) and battle hardened, so obviously they're better players.

technically i think conway and young are second only to kane and latham. the boss 2008 - 2013 had a reasonable technique and an incredible eye that allowed him to deal to anyone in world cricket. since his eye issues and hitting 30 some of his flaws have become more pronounced, but obviously he has still been a good batsman and is even on his way to atg odi batsman status #3 only to kohli and abdv in his era (this is the truth and the big 3 media can guzzle my ***).

nathan smith is ages away from international class imo. loved him in under 19s, predicted him to take the new red ball for nz when he swung it both ways with accuracy over 130 clicks at 17 but he has not delivered at all for otago. whoever fixed duffy needs to fix him.

the biggest challenges for nz moving forward are a test standard spinner, getting over our australia capitulation hoodoo and making sure we don't have half the team retire at once. doesn't matter how good your depth is, half a side retiring ruins the next 18 months.

I do rate Young and Conway but no neither are close to Kane technically. I rate Young's technique better than Conway (I know people will think I'm crazy) but Conway knows his game inside out and uses his strength to convert those into runs. Obviously comes with lot of failures from the past and turning it around. To be honest you don't necessarily need absolute water tight technique to score runs. If you do it does enhance your chances of being a bit more consistent than the next guy. Take for eg. Ian Bell and Pietersen. No I'm not saying Bell is Young and Pietersen is Conway but just an example. Bell had water tight technique but Pietersen was an absolute match winner on his day not withstanding how he scored or was he as pleasing looking as Bell. Conway is like that, he's flamboyant, flashes hard and knows his scoring area. If the ball is there he'll go for it but if it's not there he's quite happy to wait out.

Taylor is the same, he may not be all that pleasing to the eyes as Kane but he's very effective, can take the game away in a session, takes the attack to the opponent. Maybe doesn't have the patience and temperament but he makes that up with ability to play all around the ground. I'm for Taylor to play as long as he likes in any format. He's earned that right. Even if he doesn't go well at times what he brings to the team in terms of experience cannot be measured.

 

[Bahnz]

I kinda want Ross to retire just so I can read all the shitty things he has to say about BMac in his book.

 

[The Hutt Rec]

I kinda want Ross to retire just so I can read all the ****ty things he has to say about BMac in his book.

I bet he'll be too classy to say much ... but cmon Ross, return serve!!!

 

[NZTailender]

Knowing Ross it'd probably be diplomatic and self reflective on how he was feeling but also just quietly and clearly lay out facts at his end that will show Bmac and Hesson to be dicks.

 

[Bahnz]

I genuinely think that if he writes one, Ross' biography will be fascinating. He'd have so many unique perspectives on the development of the game over a pretty wild period in NZ cricket history. His relationship with Martin Crowe, his early years flatting with Jesse, his views on the different approaches of 7 coaches and 4 captains, the world cup campaigns, the captaincy debacle etc etc. I normally have zero interest in post-career biographies but I'm definitely buying that one.

 

[The Hutt Rec]

I genuinely think that if he writes one, Ross' biography will be fascinating. He'd have so many unique perspectives on the development of the game over a pretty wild period in NZ cricket history. His relationship with Martin Crowe, his early years flatting with Jesse, his views on the different approaches of 7 coaches and 4 captains, the world cup campaigns, the captaincy debacle etc etc. I normally have zero interest in post-career biographies but I'm definitely buying that one.

He is writing one, it was mentioned in an article a while back.

 

[James]

Stuff

www.stuff.co.nz

This part especially is concerning for the future of cricket in NZ. Given how successful we've been in recent years, I'm surprised the number of kids playing the game has dropped by nearly half.

At the start of the millennium nearly 18,000 schoolboys and girls were playing cricket. The last census showed that the number had dropped below 10,000, lower even than badminton.

 

[Fuller Pilch]

I'm not sure about those stats. Cricket numbers at junior level grew a lot after the 2015 CWC and girls' cricket seems more popular now than ever before. It wouldn't be the 1st time that Mark Reason got it wrong.

 

[Chewie]

someone do an OIA request to NZ Cricket (can you OIA them?)

 

[The Hutt Rec]

From the 2019/20 annual report: https://epublishbyus.com/ebook/10049357/html/index.html#page/19

"New Zealand's active cricket playing base has stabilised after a number of years of decline. There are now 65,000 active players as well as over 100,000 children who each year are given the opportunity to experience cricket."

Not sure what the exact definition of an active player is though.

Edit: Looks like Reason got his numbers here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sport_in_New_Zealand#Participation

 

[RossTaylorsBox]

Don't read Mark Reason

 

[nzfan]

Waste of time article. What is the zest of it? Free to air doesn't work. The free to air channel will make all the money and NZC none. Like the idea of free to air but it's not prime for NZC coffers. I think there are more people following cricket than ever. Everyone seems to know what's going on. Loads of folks I know that are not cricket fanatic but they burn midnight oil to watch BBL, IPL etc as well.

 

[Bahnz]

The one thing that I do wonder about, is whether the loss of Sky's advertising budget might be affecting attendance at games. Not even an obsessive like me was aware that the WI tour was beginning until about 2 days before the first T20. I know Spark has been running ads on youtube (and I'm guessing TVNZ), but a decent chunk of casual cricket followers were probably primarily kept aware of the tour schedule by sky sports ads, and I do worry that the current series v WI might've passed a lot of people by.

 

[Immenso]

The first match of the summer was free on FTA, assume it was advertised.

The first match of each series will be on FTA (Windies, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Australia)

 

[CharlesLara]

I'll just touch on what I saw - to give you guys an insight as to how he operated. He bowls a really good pace for a kid. 80-85km/h, and he does spin it, and has a good wrongun (which I think a lot of you guys were already aware off), but what got me really excited was the flight he operated with. He was able to get it above the eye-line and to get the dip to draw the batters in. Unflappable when batters took him on too. Just stuck to his stock ball, didn't look like he panicked. Just trusted his best ball and consistently took wickets throughout the day. 7 in each innings on a decent club wicket (Suburbs batted first and scored 350) was truly remarkable. I saw Ish a lot playing for Papatoetoe at a similar age, just before he played 19s and then for ND. There's no comparison - Ashok is miles ahead at the same age.

Very good to hear this. Ish was never consistent, he was just the best we had at the time and we always get super hype about young leg spinners (I was that guy once upon a time too). After my previous post about the leg spin culture here hopefully changing, very encouraging to hear stuff like this. My only concern, and Tarun, Barrington etc would be VERY aware of is the dreaded growth spurt BUT I feel as though his support system, self awareness and his own bowling IQ is all at a high level already.

One thing I noticed, and I might be reading too much into this (I am, I'm sad and pause videos to see leg spin grips), he seems to use his middle finger a lot which would explain his ability to make it drop quickly, hopefully get the chance to have a word with him soon and discuss it. I used to do something similar and turn wasn't by greatest strength, but getting the ball up and down at a decent pace is the ideal mode especially for NZ. Our most successful spinners are masters of flight deception, IE what the ball did before landing rather than pure turn.

 

[Kippax]

From the 2019/20 annual report: https://epublishbyus.com/ebook/10049357/html/index.html#page/19

"New Zealand's active cricket playing base has stabilised after a number of years of decline. There are now 65,000 active players as well as over 100,000 children who each year are given the opportunity to experience cricket."

Not sure what the exact definition of an active player is though.

Edit: Looks like Reason got his numbers here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sport_in_New_Zealand#Participation

Have you ever known NZC to not put a positive spin on something that most clever people can sense is starting to suck? I haven't.

The lack of Kane Williamsons and Frankie Mackays who immerse themselves in the game to a fully religious degree will likely be the problem in NZ. I always cringe when I see chat about the quantity of the young cricketers rather than the quality of young cricketers, as if it's an industry where every lamb on the dude's farm will fetch more or less the same deadweight price as the next.

 

[Immenso]

It's very unappealing picking a side between basically David White or Mark Reason.

NZ cricket has been behind a sky paywall for about 20 years.

Now it is behind a spark paywall, which is cheaper, but less 'convenient', and less geographic reach.

Biggest concern is the rural viewer, rather than the poor family. NZ cricket talent pipeline is basically Auckland, Canterbury plus the Hawke Cup districts that make up CD and ND. Are those Hawke Cup kids on farms or in Tauranga, Napier etc with high speed broadband?

It would be good to get a FTA / paywall balance. Don't think we are there, but don't think we were there 12 months ago either.

 

[Binkley]

On the plus side, is anyone else enjoying hearing Peter Williams back doing cricket commentary? He is the first cricket commentator I can remember noticing as a kid - and the first one I actively preferred to listen to. I can also remember being very surprised to see and hear him on the TV news when he made the shift there - it felt kinda as if Richard Hadlee was suddenly reading out the weather forecasts.

 

[Bahnz]

If nothing else, I'm a bit annoyed that Spark hasn't gotten around to making a PS4 app for Spark Sport, so for now I can only watch the cricket on my laptop or my phone.

In all likelihood if this doesn't work out for Spark then they'll just end up selling the rights back to Sky after a few years. Kinda doubt it'll kill cricket in the interim.

 

[Mike5181]

Stuff

www.stuff.co.nz

This part especially is concerning for the future of cricket in NZ. Given how successful we've been in recent years, I'm surprised the number of kids playing the game has dropped by nearly half.

Isn't Spark at $25 quite a bit cheaper than SKY though? Looking at the latter it looks like you have to add some 'SKY starter' package to their Sport offering, which then pushes it out to like $58.