***Official** Sri Lanka in New Zealand

[Matt52]

We're playing a huge amount of ODI cricket before the World Cup - that's why.

And also we dont know what our best line up is. Fleming will be there, and Astle, But we dont know where astle or McCullum should bat, our bowlers are always a mixture and we needed to give a young guy like Taylor a go (although he might have made it anyway. Our top team is still up in the air.

 

[Sir Redman]

True, comes down to what Sir Redman said, if he had our best eleven on the park, we probably would have made 300-320. Without Styris, Fleming, Oram, McCullum we do miss a lot in the middle/later order.

I still don't understand why we're opening the batting with McCullum. We're going down the same route as the Test team in trying to make opening batsman out of middle order batsman. Just doesn't work IMO.

Remember McCullum first came into the side as an opening batsman, and from memory he was an opener at age group level as well.He's also opened for Canterbury in the last few seasons.

I'm more worried about some of the other experiments going on. This has got a similar feeling to our last WC campaign about it. We were seemingly in good shape before the WC, playing a 'standard' formation team with 6 batsman, 4 bowlers and a keeper, and then suddenly come WC time we threw that out the window - we had McMillan opening, Vettori opening, Astle coming in at 3 etc. Now we're trying Vettori up the order, Franklin came in early in that 20/20 game, we've played two keepers - it's just not right. We cannot make these mistakes again if we want to win the World Cup.

 

[Nate]

Mason will gun it.

 

[Matt52]

Mason will gun it.

By "gun it", are you implying some sort of self inflicted injury???. The best of the NZ bowlers is Franklin going for 7 an over.

 

[The Baconator]

Wow, great start from Sri Lanka here, now NZ know what it feels like. Sounds like a top innings from Taylor earlier as well, fair play to the lad.

 

[MoxPearl]

Dont know if i have ever seen a bowling display this bad.......

hard 2 watch really..

Mcullum could bowl better than this

 

[MoxPearl]

Why do the commentators keep priaising the batters....

I dont think anyone could actually bowl worse than this if they tried...

 

[Prince EWS]

Good batting from Jayasuirya but NZ have really bowled ridiculously badly. Franklin is the only one to have even resembled a bowler while he was in action.

 

[Neil Pickup]

Just looking at this scorecard reminds me of England.

Do you think England & NZ could both lose the same ODI at any point during the CB series?

 

[Nate]

 

[Prince EWS]

Just looking at this scorecard reminds me of England.

Do you think England & NZ could both lose the same ODI at any point during the CB series?

New Zealand are actually very under-strength for this game though. Fleming, Bond, Mills and Styris would make a big difference to the side IMO. They also have Oram to come back although whether he actually improves the one day side is somewhat debatable. I certainly see them being competitive in the CB series.

 

[Bahnz]

Yeah a bowling line-up of Bond, Mills, Gillespie (without the gitters), Oram, Vettori and possibly Patel looks pretty solid. But this line-up with Franklin, Adams and Mason looks distinctly village. I think rotation is fine for our batsmen, but we simply don't have the depth with our bowling.

 

[dinu23]

super innings from sanath. what a champ.

 

[Turbinator]

It really has been vintage Jaysuriya in this match.

But, however, don't blame NZL for this to-be crushing defeat.

 

[James90]

New Zealand really don't have the depth to implement a rotation policy.

 

[Fiery]

My god, just finished work and caught the score. Career ending performances by Mason and Gillespie surely...what's with all the no balls?! This will teach us for thinking we can rest players like Bond and Fleming. Do John Bracewell and co. think they have the same licence to rotate players as Graham Henry?
One singular positive to come out of this game: RL Taylor

 

[Matt52]

I suppose if you are looking at this from an experimentation perspective then it looks a little brighter for NZ. Ok, so we are getting hammered but we wanted to find out about a few players and we did.

We found out that taylor can score hundreds against bowling attacks that include Vaas, malinga and one of the best spinners ever, so thats useful.

We found that Adams is the same as ever and should not get anywhere near the side again. He's a good athlete but not a good cricketer.

Mason is not good enough either but at least Gillespie showed a little promise.

So keep Taylor and Gillespie and get rid of Mason and Adams

 

[Tim]

The Marshall twins are a joke and that's right, NZ just don't have the depth to be wasting time trying to give fringe players a game or two.

But still, we were missing 5 first pick players from this team...no excuses though, we didn't finish the job with the bat and the bowling was to put it lightly, awful.

 

[chipmonk]

Got to hand it to Sanath definitely one of the greatest ODI players EVER !

This I believe is his 23rd ODI century. Their is no one who can bludgen centuries like him... all of them are at blasted at a phenominal strike rate in a manner which has no comparison ! what a Gun !

 

[cric_manic]

Why have a rotation policy for the WC when the only chane NZ have of winning it is if our top players are on form such as flemming and bond?????? and they need to play as much cricket as possible to keep them in form