His case kinda similar to Barry Richards and Mike Procter in my mind. If I include them ahead of guys like Gary Kirsten, a much proven quality opener of modern age, can't see why I won't do the same for Cowie. Albeit I digress, Boult vs Cowie is much closer and Boult more proven and has a good record.
This Team has no weakness. 2 Splendid Openers one left handed and another right handed. Strong middle order. A wicket keeper batsmen at no 6 and 3 Allrounders Cairns, Vettori and hadlee. 2 bowlers who can bat a little bit. Batting is very strong. Chris cairns had lot of injuries in his career and one of the reason was he was the opening bowler for the most of his career for New Zealand and used to take lot of work load which had a strain on his body. In this team he is a 5th bowler and 7 th batsmen so he should be fine and can play injury free with few overs to bowl and batting at 7. Vettori a good spin option and can be effective if the wicket is turning and 3 bowlers Hadlee, Wagner and Boult can be lethal. This Team is very strong and can beat the best teams if Captain Kane Williamson uses right tactics.
Every team can't have no weaknesses, and this team isn't particularly strong. So no, don't think they can beat the best teams, in fact think of the main 8, may be the 2nd weakest.
I know that West Indies and Australia are stronger but this team has batsmen till no 9 and 5 bowlers so they are well balanced. No Weakness means to say they have all type of players who can fulfill different roles for a strong team. We all know Shane Warne is far superior to Vettori. So I am only referring to Team composition.
I bracket Simpson, Lawry and Morris fairly close to Hayden while purists might have Trumper above them all.
Cairns and Vettori would've been teenagers in those photos and Hadlee 20/21.
Young Richard Hadlee looks like Jermaine Clement
Quantity doesn't nearly mean or match quality though, at least not to me. So the batting to 9 doesn't hold sway with me tbh.
It has quality and quantity. Batting lineup till no 9 is also crucial sometimes to save matches. The New Zealand team doesn’t have a Lara or Bradman but they can still hold on only when you have players who can bat upto no 9. This team already has 2 ATG Batsmen in Williamson and Crowe.
Crowe isn’t ATG and need to wait till Williamsons career is over although he’ll probably become an ATG.
You don’t get it Martin Crowe maintained an Average of 45 in 90s which was great and he was one of the first few to figure out how to play reverse swing. He was a quality batsmen sometimes better than many other ATG in terms of technique.
