*Official* New Zealand in England 2015

[morgieb]

Well he should certainly be batting ahead of Broad.

Amazing.

 

[jcas0167]

I ithink if Anderson cant bowl you can justify dropping him as an all-rounder and replacing him with a specialist bat i.e. BJ.

Alternatively, could look to bolster the bowling and bring in Bracewell to replace Anderson in the all-rounder role, but bat him at number 7. Latham to keep and Rutherford to open with Guptill.

"He has very good pace, very good control and an excellent action and with the bat I think he will one day score a lot of test runs…" Dermot Reeve 2008

 

[Immenso]

If the second test is muntered by the rain - then I'd take a 0-1 loss. About par for what I thought going in. Better than 2013. Plus with Watling and other injuries it's all starting to look very 2013ish again. Next test will be an anihilation if we are playing guys like Santner and Ronchi.

Rain dance time

 

[Howe_zat]

If the second test is muntered by the rain - then I'd take a 0-1 loss. About par for what I thought going in. Better than 2013. Plus with Watling and other injuries it's all starting to look very 2013ish again. Next test will be an anihilation if we are playing guys like Santner and Ronchi.

Rain dance time

If the second test is washed out, you'd take losing the only competitve test?

 

[Immenso]

If the second test is washed out, you'd take losing the only competitve test?

Yeah, that ship has sailed.

If it was a 3 match series I'd be keen for some game time under their belts, but don't see much upside here. Especially if we are debuted ODI guys like Ronchi and Santner.

Please rain.

 

[Riggins]

Agree, I think anyone who watched that series knows Johnson wasn't even in the same ball-park of the 'scary threatening Johnson' of the last Ashes series.

Don't think you're doing a WW at all.

The worst thing is, fair chance future excel 'gurus' will look back at that series with no context and see Cook dominated Mitchell Johnson and use it to put him on a pedestal.

 

[flibbertyjibber]

The worst thing is, fair chance future excel 'gurus' will look back at that series with no context and see Cook dominated Mitchell Johnson and use it to put him on a pedestal.

That series and the following one in Australia sum up why Johnson is probably the biggest enigma of all bowlers ever to play the game.

 

[El Nino]

Better not rain every day, got my tickets yesterday

 

[Moss]

Not being able to draw with England punishable with maximum sentence right now.

This is something I had wanted to bring up earlier. Are we, as supporters, getting a little too hung-up about rankings? Sure, they are the one indicator of where a side is at a given time, but when you can go from 7th to 3rd back to 7th back in the space of a single series, perhaps they're not worth taking all that seriously. This (dropping to 7th) shouldn't obscure what the NZ side has achieved in the last 18 months, though that success may not be sustainable given the opposition that lies in store in the near future.

Yeah potentially tough times ahead. But I don't think we should too worked up about the rankings for a while. In the last couple of years NZ have drawn with Pakistan away, beaten Windies home and away, and beaten SL at home and drawn away, so we can be satisfied they've pretty much held their own among those sides. Might as well sit back and enjoy the contests against Aus and the Saffers since they don't come around too often, and hope NZ give a good account of themselves.

This is something I posted earlier, and WW called me out on it saying are NZ happy being "best of the rest" or are they really looking at being a better side. What I meant to say is this (and is only my personal view, not representative of the feeling of other fans I imagine): for a long time, when NZ were ranked 8th, I thought the board was falling over themselves to schedule series against the big 3 and little else. Understandably, since that's where the profits are. The majority of the defeats which contributed to NZ's slide were against those sides and South Africa. Contests between the "2nd tier" - Lanka, Windies and Pakistan, were few and far between. I always felt this was a mistake, and did think that we needed play those sides more regularly and come up to their level first. The side was being kicked around by the Windies on that 2012 tour, but since then NZ have noticeably jumped a level and it's helped that a lot of cricket in that time came against the sides outside the big 3. On the evidence of the results we can be fairly satisfied about NZ's standing among those sides. However until recently, the rankings DID NOT reflect this.

But reaching the next level and going toe-to-toe with the likes of Australia and South Africa is still a tough ask, impressive as this side is. If we lose there, it would mean further damage as far as the rankings are concerned, but again that simply won't tell the whole story. (And anyway, no matter how well NZ does they'll never be a big drawcard.) Being number 1 in the world is a worthwhile ambition, but as long as the side is playing good cricket and giving their best shot (which cannot really be said of NZ crica 2007-2011), for reasons I've suggested here I wouldn't get too worked up about rankings.

 

[Howe_zat]

This is something I had wanted to bring up earlier. Are we, as supporters, getting a little too hung-up about rankings? Sure, they are the one indicator of where a side is at a given time, but when you can go from 7th to 3rd back to 7th back in the space of a single series, perhaps they're not worth taking all that seriously. This (dropping to 7th) shouldn't obscure what the NZ side has achieved in the last 18 months, though that success may not be sustainable given the opposition that lies in store in the near future.

The points are more indicative than the rankings. If 3rd-7th are all withing a few points of each other then that tells you something about the relative merits of those sides.

 

[Furball]

Rankings at the moment are pretty meaningless. South Africa and Australia are rightfully 1 and 2, although I think the rankings over-rate South Africa a touch. Rest might as well be joint 3rd, there's pretty much nothing between 3 and 7.

 

[starofwonder]

Looks like its gonna be cool, that wind keeps coming in from the NW.... from Iceland !

 

[GIMH]

Do people not think Anderson merits a place in the side solely for his batting?

Flibberty already made my joke. I got nothing

 

[flibbertyjibber]

Rankings at the moment are pretty meaningless. South Africa and Australia are rightfully 1 and 2, although I think the rankings over-rate South Africa a touch. Rest might as well be joint 3rd, there's pretty much nothing between 3 and 7.

Yeah, odd session here and there decides the games between those teams.

 

[Zinzan]

Rankings at the moment are pretty meaningless. South Africa and Australia are rightfully 1 and 2, although I think the rankings over-rate South Africa a touch. Rest might as well be joint 3rd, there's pretty much nothing between 3 and 7.

It's a bigger deal for us having been hanging in 7th & 8th place for all those years.

 

[Cabinet96]

Not saying Aussies bowled well in 10/11, but I think Cook has a knack of making it seem bowlers bowled worse than they did, especially in hindsight, because he only scores in his areas.

 

[Zinzan]

Nah, that was the weakest Aust bowling attack for some time. Wasn't Siddle about the best of their bowlers that series? Certainly remember him being better than Johnson.

 

[Cabinet96]

Harris was. Didn't play Brisbane or Sydney though.

 

[GIMH]

The bowling got worse the more runs Cook/Trott etc scored. Easy to say he feasted but it worked both ways. And Siddle was very good in that series

 

[Moss]

There was also the problem with the spin cycle...they didn't want Hauritz, brought in Doherty and Beer and god knows who else.