**Official** New Zealand in Australia 2015

[Hurricane]

Fringe Aussie player with a point to prove vs. overseas blokes trying to ease into a tour and acclimatise, having never seen the fringe bloke play.

No. The JediBrah is more correct than you are. The only point Jedi is missing is that those state teams are playing on their home pitches in their home country. New Zealand sides traditionally have lost their tour match. If all test cricket were played in Australia and none anywhere else in the world then those state teams would all be in the top 3 teams in the world in their pomp.

 

[TheJediBrah]

Fringe Aussie player with a point to prove vs. overseas blokes trying to ease into a tour and acclimatise, having never seen the fringe bloke play.

Very good point, I'm sure there's many other factors as well. But in the grand scheme not particularly relevant to the point. None of these explanations can explain why touring teams to Aus kept on getting dominated by domestic sides but not touring teams to any other country.

Aus just had a freakishly strong competition back then. If the current test XI was around back then a guy like Warner would be fighting hard for an opportunity among the likes of Hayden, Slater, Langer, Maher, Love, Elliott, Blewett, Cox, Katich etc rather than walking into the team and being comfortably one of the best 2 bats in the country.

 

[Flem274*]

Freakishly strong batting competition.

We saw on the very few occassions Australia had injury issues that the bowling depth, while decent, was not going to make Shield teams all powerful in test cricket. Behind McGrath, Gillespie, Lee and Warne Australia had two or three high quality options in Clark, Kasper and MacGill and then....Brad Williams and Nathan Bracken....

I'd even say Australia have greater bowling talent depth today, they just don't have a few guys with millions of test poles to boot like they did in the McGrath era.

 

[Dan]

Meant it more in the way that the quality of the Aus team meant you had to be scarily good to get in, and what better way to prove yourself than smacking tons against the bowlers your 'superiors' would be facing.

I was adding to your post, not critiquing it