Not been on this thread during the series, and now I feel a bit bad about the post I am about to make after reading the last few posts here. But it's been a few days now so hopefully we have moved on sort of. As a fellow fan, I fully understand the pain a comprehensive series loss like this would cause. I just spent a whole Sunday, sitting quietly and thinking over and over about 83 all out.
But, getting back to the series, I watched a fair bit of the last 5 Aus-NZ test matches.
One of the deeply concerning things from NZ perspective for me was obviously the regression of Southee and especially Boult as test bowlers, but also the lack of any one else stepping up. The last few years when New Zealand achieved some degree of success, you have had guys like Sodhi or Craig or Wagner or Bracewell chipping in every now and then, plus you had your two premier bowlers at their best.
This is where New Zealand is falling behind here. We talked before this series how South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Pakistan were all very evenly balanced with England and India a bit ahead, which basically meant not much between the top 6 teams which made for very competitive cricket. The last 5 test matches unfortunately were not very competitive precisely because New Zealand failed to pick up 20 wickets even once. Failure to do that over 5 test matches is huge and you cannot expect to win many games. And New Zealand are now a tad behind the other 5 teams.
As for the batting, once again, other than KW and Taylor, you don't really have a dependable test standard batsman. Latham has promise and should improve. But the others like Guptill and Nichols and Anderson are just too inconsistent. You can't really develop as a test team with 2 dependable batsman, as was evident in this series, if one is injured and the other guy doesn't score, it will seem like a different pitch every time you go out to bat.
Having said that, it's not all doom and gloom, precisely because players can develop. For the longest time, South Africa solely relied on Steyn and Morkel, with the likes of Kallis, Parnell, Harris, playing the supporting role, before Philander came along.
Similarly, Australia seemed to have only Clarke and Smith in 13-14, with Rogers developing, and then Warner who developing into a test opener. Even then, as early as the last Ashes, it seemed like Smith and Warner were the only two dependable batsmen, yet today you have people like Khawaja, Vogues and Burns developing.
I think Latham can improve. You never know when another guy comes along. But, what this means though is that the upward growth of New Zealand test team over the last 2 years is slowing down and they will fall behind the rest for some time.
How well they pick themselves up and how well KW takes on the captaincy and the team responds to him would be the key.
No one saw the turnaround that started with McCullum coming, so we never know. Boult and Southee have age on their side and I hope they are able to pick themselves up. Boult is a quality bowler and it's just 1 bad season. He should be able to work out what he is doing wrong and pick himself up.
