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*Official* New Zealand v India T20s & ODIs

Athlai

Athlai

Not Terrible
His SR of 128 from 7 and lower isn't that bad. For the regulars since he debuted he's a fine option imo.

By no means is he anywhere near as good as Shadab (who now bat's higher than 7) but who is
 
Athlai

Athlai

Not Terrible
Zinzan said:
Agree with that, and all the more reason to want someone who can hit from the get-go & not dot up when there's only 10 balls or so left.
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He's genuinely one of the better options in the world. This is a problem with our 4-6
 
Zinzan

Zinzan

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Fair point about our fragile 1-6 though in T20Is, which is why I think having Macewell at 7 & Santner at 8 give us enough batting depth for them all to feel a bit more freed up.
 
S

SteveNZ

Cricketer Of The Year
Zinzan said:
Fair point about our fragile 1-6 though in T20Is, which is why I think having Macewell at 7 & Santner at 8 give us enough batting depth for them all to feel a bit more freed up.
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I feel as if the fragile 1-6 is based a lot around their own games, but also it's hard to commit fully to the cause when Santner is at 7 when he's an 8 probably at best, and 8-11 can collapse in a heap as they did on Tuesday. Part of human nature would be knowing if you go hard too early, there's a long tail exposed. England, for example, don't have that issue - hence they won the World Cup. Giving Mitchell the #3 spot and having an extra batsman at seven, which you can achieve by having Macewell there and contributing a bowling option, would go some way to fix that. Plus quite possibly dropping Neesham and having a more well-rounded finisher, or again someone who bowls, or something other than the one-dimension approach Jimmy currently brings.
 
Athlai

Athlai

Not Terrible
The mental gymnastics we constantly get into to forgive 4-6 for not doing their job is impressive
 
straw man

straw man

Hall of Fame Member
Zinzan said:
Fair point about our fragile 1-6 though in T20Is, which is why I think having Macewell at 7 & Santner at 8 give us enough batting depth for them all to feel a bit more freed up.
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We end up talking a lot about the batting shortcomings and a lot of it does stem from this choice of five bowlers (with Santner a little high at 7) vs four bowlers plus allrounders. I don't have a general preference either way in T20s - it depends on the makeup of the players available for each particular side. It's just notable that NZ have made the choice to go with five bowlers, which we accept weakens the batting, and yet it was still the bowlers that let us down vs Pakistan. Certainly the difference between Pakistan's bowling and ours was very large.

Part of this is just form/randomness - Boult is a gun but wasn't great that match and Ferguson, as much as I love him, hasn't achieved results for a little while.

Macewell replacing another bowler should improve balance a little, though he has been poor with the bat down at 6/7 so far. I was gunning for Sodhi to be left out leading into the WC but tbf he exceeded expectations (i.e. he didn't single handedly lose us a close match, so wag?). Southee was also expected to be a weakness but was adequate, and our reserves like Milne would probably have delivered a very similar level of performance. So all up we have a whole lot of middling-ness in the bowling ranks despite selecting five of them. Shifting focus to ODIs and then tests for a while should be beneficial imo.
 
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F

Fuller Pilch

Hall of Fame Member
Really intrigued about the XI they pick:

I'd say that a top 5 of
Allen
Conway
Williamson
Latham (wk)
Mitchell

is likely, followed by 2 from Phillips, Neesham, and Bracewell (which 2?)

Santner at 8

Henry will (SHOULD) be one of the seamers, with 2 out of 3 from Milne, Southee, and Ferguson joining him.
 
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