The players named on the face of it look like core NZ players from the late 90s (though a few early-90s mixed in), but while some were actually good ODI players - Astle, Twose, Fleming, Cairns, Harris, Larson - some very much were not.
Spearman has been mentioned, while other openers Horne and Young were passable at best. Nash and Doull both averaged over 40 in brief ODI careers; they were both more test bowlers. Parore only averaged 25.6 with the bat. Allott was great for a very brief period only.
The point I'm really dying to get to though, is that McMillan sucked at ODIs. Oh man, he was godawful. This was my core early 2000s cricketing bugbear. Somehow it escaped everyone's notice at the time, they looked at the NZ side, saw McMillan among a bunch of other Cantabrians and assumed he belonged. He did not.
His ODI batting record to the end of 2000 was 71 matches, 1425 runs @ 22.6
Those are Khaled Mashud levels. In a key middle order spot.
Will pause briefly to acknowledge McMillan was a better test than ODI batsman, that he was only 23 in the 99 World Cup (scored 153 @ 17), he surely should not have been a fixture in the side from such a young age, and I don't mind him now as a relaxed vibes-type commentator.
But I can still barely believe he was an automatic pick in the NZ ODI team from 1997 to 2007. And then ironically, retired in 2007 at age 30 when he was playing the best ODI cricket he ever had, to go play in the ICL. ODI career tally of 197 matches, 4707 runs @ 28.2 - can adjust for eras all we want but that is not good. Was a good example of the fallacy that hitting the ball hard to the boundary makes you a good ODI player, even if you can't find gaps in the infield or rotate the strike.
Overall the late 90s team was good, though with a few too many weak links. I'd say they performed at about their level.
