One thing I will argue with you on is giving an F about the Champions Trophy. I care. It's a major tournament, proper 50 over cricket, against the world's best sides. I massively care. I know I'm probably not in the majority, but I'll be glued.
I just look at 50-over cricket and it makes me annoyed at humans. In the 80s and 90s, and into most of the 00s, we loved ODI cricket. The greatest days of my life were on the terraces for ODI games. What's changed? Nothing apart from our attention span. We had an amazing product and we cannibalised it with lame, unmemorable cricket. I hate that.
Never fear, I'll eagerly watch the Champions Trophy. This one feels a little messy/odd - India not playing in Pakistan, questionable involvement of Afghanistant, Australia seemingly fielding a cbf side (they'll probably still win) - but it still should have some great cricket. If crowds in this tri-series are anything to go by the CT itself will be a big deal in Pakistan and that will add a lot of atmosphere.
I was as much arguing against the prevailing wisdom that you shouldn't pick someone for a big tournament if they haven't been
extensively tried out already. In the past we have often spent 12-18 months prior to ODI world cups playing a heap of ODIs, trialling numerous players, disregarding those who don't have say 20 ODIs under their belt. But world tournaments are
so frequent now, one per year, if you follow this logic it really slows the rate of introducing new players. The ODI World Cup is still a bigger deal, but for the Champions Trophy I would be fine throwing in a promising player with only a handful of ODIs and T20Is to replace someone busted like Latham. Though also note Latham wouldn't have played a white ball game since the ODI world cup if I was selector, so the replacement guy would still have twice as many NZ matches as Hay does currently.
Anyway, Latham is it. Three ducks in a row so err the only way is up. I will repeat that yes, he is actually a good player. Though aside from terrible white ball form, there's also the feeling that he'll fade when the pressure is on in a knockout match, an issue that already hangs over a few others like Young and Chapman too.
