***Official*** Australia vs New Zealand ODIs 2016/17

[Blocky]

I'm confused, how are any of those analogies?

They're examples of extremely bad decisions, like waiting for a bear to return and kill you.

 

[TheJediBrah]

You're all missing the point here.

• The bear was David Warner mauling our bowling attack, then he bought his cubs out in Mitchell Marsh and Travis Head to have a bit of a chew too.
• We lay there dying, although brave Guptill at the very least attempted to get away from the scene of the attack so that the other cubs (Starc and Cummins) wouldn't come back to finish the job.
• Williamson and Neesham decided that instead of risking a quick death to potentially survive, they'd rather ensure they had a pretty corpse so they stuck around the scene of the crime slowly bleeding out.

The bear had already mauled us, because we made a stupid mistake to send Matt Henry at the bear and his cubs in the final stages of the match... at that point, we couldn't run and hide, we were already bleeding out.

The end.

Where you're going wrong is quite simple really. You're correct in thinking that the way KW and Neesham batted was very unlikely to lead to a win.

You're incorrect in thinking that them batting differently, more recklessly, would have been more likely to lead to a win. It wouldn't have. The way they played was by far the way that gave NZ the biggest chance of winning the game, however small that was.

That's all there is to it.

 

[straw man]

IMO Blocky is right that, given the lack of firepower in our tail and the quality of Australia's death bowling, Williamson and Neesham needed to take the chance to score the runs they did at say a 30% higher strike rate for the chase to stay within reach, and if they got out then so be it. It's still the difference between **** all and a sparrow's fart chance of winning though.

 

[NZTailender]

Nah, disagree. They needed to build a platform given the inexperience at ODI level of CdG, Munro, Santner and the general nurdling nature of Watling. Had they gone hard, early, we would've been all-out sooner, or any potential gun innings that could've been played by the Colins or Mitch would've probably fallen short because they don't really have 100* type innings in them.

CdG and Munro are there for hitting. 50 off 20 kind of stuff. if it had gotten to 120 off the last ten, those two - plus Santner, Southee and Henry - could've pulled off a slogging victory, maybe. But they aren't getting to that without a solid platform, and those guys don't have it in them to make 250 runs between them if Williamson and Neesham are out for pretty and intent-ful 50 off 35s earlier in the innings.

We went into the game with a weakened batting line up, bowled ****, and were behind all the way without an ATG innings from Guptill from the get-go. Don't pretend we could've magically won if Neesham and Kane batted miraculously because Starc & Hazlewood are too class the let that happen.

 

[straw man]

So bowling:
- For the love of god don't bowl Henry or for that matter Neesham after the 35 over mark on a flat wicket.
- Henry needs to work hard on some variations. Good with the new ball, hopeless after it gets older.
- Southee actually bowled his variations better than I'd seen for a while. Showed up Henry, who has none. I still rank Henry slightly higher with the new white ball unless there's big swing in the air for Southee though. I know many of you disagree. Shoot me, I like Henry with the new ball.
- Boult ranks as our best death bowler right now but that was still pretty bad. Yeah it's hard when they're able to hit through the line so safely on a flat wicket, so delivering good yorkers, slower balls and bouncers is needed. Don't think his slower ball is particularly good or that he's able to deliver it reliably enough.
- Yeah CDG bowled a few decent slower balls but still went at 8.2 an over and with all the guile in the world gentle 120km/h stuff is going to disappear against that batting on that wicket. Is not the answer. Hoping this experiment with him in ODIs comes to an end soon.
- Santner bowling through the middle for 50 runs while taking max one wicket is very reminiscent of mid-career Vettori, and like that period from Vettori I get the feeling it's less useful than it looks on paper. How might he go bowling in the 35-42 over period?
- I hold out some minor hope that Neesham might one day be able to do a good job as fifth bowler in tests, but none in limited overs. So very very inaccurate and hittable.
- We would kill for a mystery spinner or genuine (preferably slingy and hard to pick up) quick on a flat wicket like that. They're the only ones that, aside from the new ball period, don't have to go straight into damage limitation mode.
- Australia were able to reverse the ball but NZ weren't. Could put it down to evening conditions but it's not the first time it's happened either. What could we be doing differently? Recent foruming suggests lollies, mints, hair gel, zinc, sandpaper, the old bottletops, or putting the ball in an oven. Get the technology team onto integrating those into the uniform asap please. 'Sponsored by Westinghouse' branding opportunity too.
- I think the people piling on Williamson's captaincy from the moment he took over because he's not McCullum and he's not their demonstrative style of leader, has been over the top, however now he's been in the job a little while he needs to start turning the ship around. He's young and it takes time to grow into a leadership role, get the assurance and own it. Time to do so. As much as we might wish it weren't the case, all that stuff about looking proactive, looking decisive, looking like you know what you're doing, strong body language etc makes a big difference, mainly because people believe that it makes a big difference. It's almost enough to make me wish he'd teapot around a bit like Smith. Almost. However you can do most of this while still retaining your own personal style and Williamson needs to work out how that looks for himself.
- That's somewhat separate from the tactical side which has also been lacking e.g. the bowling plans. Has this series just been part of a larger experimental design where we test random combinations and plug them into a computer with the results, to tell us what the best ones are? I hope so because otherwise there's been a lot of dumb tactics from the Hesson/Williamson/Jurgensen team. So far btw the computer has learned that there's a very strong correlation between Henry or Neesham bowling at the death and the opposition scoring a **** tonne of runs. Good work guys. Maybe we could leave off trying those elements again.

 

[Zinzan]

Lol, why is everyone being so extreme either way on this as usual when it comes to our batting approach?

KW & Neesham did have the right idea trying to keep wickets in the bank, but it was unforgivable the level of dots they allowed between the 10th & 20th over, which meant we hit the 30 over mark at about 170 odd, which was 25-30 short of where they needed to be to have a realistic outside nudge.

Had they managed to get to 200, we would have needed 180 off 20 overs with 8 pegs in hand. Unlikely & tough, but not impossible.

So yeah, it's perfectly valid in hindsight to say both Neesham and KW could have & should have been a heck of a lot busier in turning the strike over early on, without taking silly & unnecessary risks. There dead-batting defensive shots just pushed us too far behind.

 

[Bahnz]

New Zealand are badly missing Milne and Anderson this series. After Boult they were probably our two best death overs bowlers imo. Filling in their overs with debutantes and pie-throwers was predictably disastrous.

 

[TheJediBrah]

http://www.cricketweb.net/forum/cricket-chat/57519-new-zealand-doom-gloom-thread.html

 

[SteveNZ]

IMO Blocky is right that, given the lack of firepower in our tail and the quality of Australia's death bowling, Williamson and Neesham needed to take the chance to score the runs they did at say a 30% higher strike rate for the chase to stay within reach, and if they got out then so be it. It's still the difference between **** all and a sparrow's fart chance of winning though.

Fair enough, you and him see it that way. I see it the way Jedi, NZTail etc do. Yes, their ability to turn over the strike wasn't as good as it should be. That was the issue, not their lack of desire to hit out.

My issue with this series, and I'm not dooming and glooming in a big way, is how we've looked underdone/ill-disciplined/without plans. We've fielded poorly, bowled no-balls, showed a lack of Plan B, some bowlers aka Henry have no semblance of change ups, and our ability to turn over the strike is so, so far below Australia's. Those are coaching issues. Shouldn't we expect to be better after a series in India and plenty of cricket for all concerned recently? We are good cricketers. I'm just not seeing a lot of effective coaching going on.

 

[straw man]

Fair enough, you and him see it that way. I see it the way Jedi, NZTail etc do. Yes, their ability to turn over the strike wasn't as good as it should be. That was the issue, not their lack of desire to hit out.

Alright, different opinions is fine. I just think the below is beyond possible even in our best dreams, for those players against a bowling attack including Starc. It's not even a 1 in 500. Needed to be 90-100 from the last ten at absolute maximum to give us even a faint sniff.

CdG and Munro are there for hitting. 50 off 20 kind of stuff. if it had gotten to 120 off the last ten, those two - plus Santner, Southee and Henry - could've pulled off a slogging victory, maybe.

 

[Blocky]

Where you're going wrong is quite simple really. You're correct in thinking that the way KW and Neesham batted was very unlikely to lead to a win.

You're incorrect in thinking that them batting differently, more recklessly, would have been more likely to lead to a win. It wouldn't have. The way they played was by far the way that gave NZ the biggest chance of winning the game, however small that was.

That's all there is to it.

It took us 14 overs to score our second 50; 6 overs to score our first - the game went from highly improbable to absolute lost in those 14 overs.

You can talk around in circles, and circle jerk as much as you want, that spell of batting combined with Travis Head getting through 7 at 4.2 an over was an absolute travesty and akin to laying there as a bear eats your taint.

 

[Bahnz]

Having read the 'Discussing Infractions' thread, this morning's posts make a lot more sense: Blocky's just trying to show NZT that he knows what an analogy is.

 

[social]

Forget bears and slogging, Kiwis lost because their bowling and fielding was largely ****

 

[Spark]

Forget bears and slogging, Kiwis lost because their bowling and fielding was largely ****

Yeah not sure why the batting is getting talked about so much here. They batted okay until they started slogging, you just don't chase down 380 without Virat Kohli and a few other world class bats in your side.

 

[Athlai]

Can we at least all agree that Crowded House are a NZ band?

 

[Athlai]

Yeah not sure why the batting is getting talked about so much here. They batted okay until they started slogging, you just don't chase down 380 without Virat Kohli and a few other world class bats in your side.

What would be the dream team to chase down 380 I wonder?

Warner, Kohli, Amla, AB, de Kock, Guptill, Rohit?

 

[Dan]

1. Rohit
2. Guptill
3. Kohli
4. Warner
5. de Villiers
6. Buttler +

could go alright

EDIT: ahh, yeah, QdK too

 

[KungFu_Kallis]

+Maxwell

 

[Spark]

+Maxwell

This isn't the worst call, actually.

 

[TheJediBrah]

well if you know you're going to be chasing down 380, regardless of the bowling, you might as well pick 11 batsmen . . . being independent events and all


btw a team of 7 Virat Kohlis would probably chase it down with 20 overs to spare