*Official* 2022 New Zealand Tour of England, Ireland, Scotland & Netherlands

[TheJediBrah]

Well batted England. Nice for Pope (and his average) and what can be said about Root - amazing run of form.

Been a couple years. Maybe he's just that good now rather than a brief patch of form

 

[Bahnz]

Think NZ are in serious danger of losing this game, which might not be the worst thing from a long term kick up the pants point of view. Bracewell was getting a couple to rip big in the afternoon, if England can get to 600 shortly after lunch, NZ will be in a situation where all they can do is draw, never a good position to be in. Could see the tired batsmen coming out with a defensive mindset and falling in a heap for 200ish.

The fielding and all-round discipline have taken a real nose dive in the past year. Shelled chances and no balls v SA and Bangladesh quite possibly cost NZ a 4-0 home summer, and they've now cost NZ a guilt-edged opportunity to level the series here.

Fair play to Bracewell, I was adamant that his selection was a mistake, and I still think there are better options out there, but he's had a pretty reasonable match, and really should've been given a bowl much earlier.

 

[straw man]

Score woken up to: Mixed

Went to bed at Tea when England were roaring along and looking like scoring 700. Scoring rate still roaring but three wickets pegs it back a bit, the next one the key one to get into the tail. Already provided the complementary dropped catch to Foakes so he's probably good for a century now, and Root looking unstoppable without Colin De Grandhomme there to bowl an innocuous-looking delivery to dismiss him. Best case now for NZ is get into the tail and knock over England for another 80 to even things up, though a chance of a 100+ deficit if this pair stay together.

Bad news about Jamieson. Thought his rhythm looked off all innings and now he's injured himself. Like everyone who followed NZ cricket in the nineties and noughties I get shivers and a sense of impending doom every time a fast bowler injures their back.

 

[Daemon]

Wait Wagner was dropped? I’d just assumed he was injured. What a bizarre decision.

 

[SteveNZ]

I haven't seen any of it. But the scoreboard tells me that Matt Henry (who has a terrible record as a third seamer) has just probably had his worst day in a role he already had a really, really bad record at.

I didn't mind them not picking Wagner for first test, based on his lack of bowling, and then on the balance they went in with for that match.
But this test the balance is square pegs, round holes.
This team is so rotten. In plummet.

Yep. This side has a massive selection issue with it at the moment. We're not playing our best cricket, and we're also not picking our best side for the conditions. I think the honeymoon is well and truly over for Gary Stead.

Fair play, the selection of Daryl Mitchell is a good one - although would he have played if Nicholls was fit in the first Test? Potentially not. We erred with Ajaz at Lord's, and Henry offers exactly the same thing Southee does with an older ball, if not less.

 

[straw man]

It's not worth any hot takes about who should or shouldn't have been playing, this pitch is an absolute road.

I do find it funny how both teams went from perfect fielding performances to absolute rubbish in the space of one test though. If there's ever a pitch where catches mattered, it's probably a dead one. Chances don't come easy.

Even though the pitch is flat I'd emphasise the latter over the former. NZ scored something like 553/15 and now England are 473/9 with five wickets in hand. Just woeful, you can't win matches doing that.

Pitch flat but it's still a Duke ball and there's still a bit of swing - true turgid is a dead slow Seddon park with a seamless Kookaburra.

 

[thierry henry]

Think NZ are in serious danger of losing this game, which might not be the worst thing from a long term kick up the pants point of view.

I wish this was true but, at the risk of getting all Skyliner-y, I kinda feel like this team is immune from feeling kicked up the pants. There does seem to be a sort of fatalistic belief that we have a certain way of doing things and there's nothing we can do about it if it doesn't work.

There really should have been some epiphanies after we resorted to "there's nothing else we can do" bouncers against an extremely weak Bangladesh batting line-up, only to be destroyed by none other than ****ing Ebadot who just bowled at the stumps.

 

[Bahnz]

Wait Wagner was dropped? I’d just assumed he was injured. What a bizarre decision.

He's looked a bit past it over the last 6 months, way down on pace and getting biffed around by the tailenders in the SA series. His pace in the warm-up games was clocking in the low-mid 70mph range so I think a decision was taken on that basis. Would be easy to say that he should've been selected but I'm honestly not sure how he would've gone on this deck even if he was in the kinda form he was showing this time last year. Still he couldn't have gone worse than Henry, so yeah chalk it up as another case of us all forgetting how important he is to NZ's competitiveness.

 

[straw man]

Yep. This side has a massive selection issue with it at the moment. We're not playing our best cricket, and we're also not picking our best side for the conditions. I think the honeymoon is well and truly over for Gary Stead.

Yes - between the fact that we're not getting the best out of our top players (but we won't drop them and neither should we), and that Stead's sneakily been in the job nearly four years already, bringing in a coach seems the most realistic way of renewing this side. It doesn't need demolition and rebuild from scratch like many NZ sides in the past, it just looks like we need a refresh.

The fielding and all-round discipline have taken a real nose dive in the past year. Shelled chances and no balls v SA and Bangladesh quite possibly cost NZ a 4-0 home summer, and they've now cost NZ a guilt-edged opportunity to level the series here.

Should feel guilty about all those dropped catches, I agree .

 

[SillyCowCorner1]

Root is getting traction (aka fan following) among the Americans (those that I’ve interacted with) because of Root 66

(so many puns in this ****)

 

[Prince EWS]

Letting Pope get to his hundred without facing a single ball of spin when you have one in your side should really be a sackable offence as captain.

 

[tooextracool]

The bigger crime is not playing a front line spinner at all. As bad as Pope has been against spin, it's really a massive stretch to suggest that someone who has 27 wickets in 96 FC games is going to give him the jitters.

 

[Immenso]

Wagner really needed to get an early season county gig. I've probably bowled as many overs as him in the last 6 months, and I play once-every-three-weeks vintage cricket, limited to 6 overs each max per match, - and my finished the season 3 months ago.

There's a suspicion he may be 'done'. But one innings of bowling in the 'warm-ups' was a question non-solver extraordinaire.

 

[Bahnz]

Problem is that Wagner's always been pretty mediocre in his county stints. Not a huge draw for those early season soft county wickets.

 

[Immenso]

Problem is that Wagner's always been pretty mediocre in his county stints. Not a huge draw for those early season soft county wickets.

For sure, he has to be attractive enough for a private enterprise to pay him.

That would have been the ideal antidote to a home season where he was underdone.

The next best alternative, within their control, would be to bowl him in all 2 'warm-up' games (which was 3 fielding innings worth of bowling).

I didn't follow the warm-ups as I was so exasperatedly disgusted to see them downgrade them to picnic cricket, that I don't know if Wags was available for all of them. My only take away from those mickey mouse games was to raise my eyebrows when I saw Wagner's bowling loads and infer from it (correctly) that he wasn't in line to be in the first choice 11 anymore.

 

[Burgey]

I haven’t watched much of this dig aside from a bit of session one last night, but it seems from the figures the Naz bowlers must have lacked a lot of discipline maybe? Seeing blokes going at fours plus in test matches over a decent number of overs is not a good sign.

Were they too full or did they bowl both sides of the deck? Disappointing tstl

 

[thierry henry]

From what I saw, Henry is a good exemplar of where we went wrong. He looked quite threatening at times bowling a fullish length with decent pace, but he was going for runs while looking threatening early, as he was just full enough to drive on the up.

As the innings wore on he increasingly leaked runs through a combination of trying to bowl bouncers, and bowling a lot of half volleys. So, a combination of impatience or lack of accuracy with the full stuff, and imo just really stupid tactics (not really his fault) with the short stuff.

Henry does seem to struggle to consistently hit that fullish good length without lapsing into half volleys, so he's probably just not accurate enough to be a consistently good test bowler, tactical issues aside.

 

[Magrat Garlick]

I haven’t watched much of this dig aside from a bit of session one last night, but it seems from the figures the Naz bowlers must have lacked a lot of discipline maybe? Seeing blokes going at fours plus in test matches over a decent number of overs is not a good sign.

Were they too full or did they bowl both sides of the deck? Disappointing tstl

oh wow autocorrect why did you go there

 

[Lillian Thomson]

Uncle Ben seems to have been brainwashed by Supermac already in his batting. I have a horrible vision of him telling them to go out and have a thrash to get close and then try to bowl them out and have a chase tomorrow afternoon.
In the real world a couple more solid sessions would mean we can’t lose the series. I guess the game has changed.

 

[Shady Slim]

brendon mccullum is clearly the greatest coach of all time imho