The Silver Fern

@LABCAT said in Black Caps v Pakistan:

Given that Hay is batting at 8, starting to feel like they should be putting the foot on the accelerator.

Yeah scoring rate still seems a touch slow given we're losing 8 overs.

Still, series won so probably not too much of an issue.

@No-Quarter said in ICC Champions Trophy 2025:

@canefan said in ICC Champions Trophy 2025:

I was more gutted about losing the ODI final in England. We was robbed that day

Yeah, India's ground advantage was a factor, but the ODI final against England hurt the most because outside of the crazy umpires decisions we actually won the match losing less wickets overall, but had it taken from us due to that bizarre boundary hit rule that has never been used for any other tournament. I don't think I'll ever get over that, that was our chance to win the thing and instead the ICC made a farce of it all.

Without dwelling too much on it were the teams even aware of this ridiculous rule ?

It is stupid because surely it's irrelevant to some extent how many boundaries are hit, more impressive to get there with less wickets lost ?

Highlights -

The only time Conway has looked like recapturing his form lately is when he plays aggressively, so I hope the plan is for him to go out and play a few shots. Like @Chris I'm concerned about his footwork though, even at his peak he was never a big mover of his feet but these days he seems to be stuck in concrete. You get away with that more in the shorter forms though, and he still has an incredible eye.

Watching that innings from Mitchell Owen reminded me of a few years ago - when the youngest innocently asked why "they don't just hit lots of sixes?"

What a stage to play a legendary innings like that on.

I think it reflects a pretty mediocre year overall for test cricket.

There are names there that I thought WTF but when you look at their figures it makes sense. Atkinson took 52 wickets at 22.15 in 9 matches. Henry 48 @ 18 Hazlewood 35 @ 13 but missed 40% of Aussies tests.

Ducket only averages 37 but what opener set the world alight last year. Not any Oz or Saffa.

Jadeja shades Lyon. Smith looks the tidiest keeper with a good batting record. Hazlewood is the only player that looks an obvious omission, but as I said maybe they figure he breaks too easily. Plus Aussie had a really soft programme. Pakistan Windies and India (minus Josh in the main) at home and two tests against us away.

@mariner4life said in Black Caps First Eleven for hall of fame.:

god Martyn was a beautiful player to watch.

Lara is my go to, that extravagant back lift gave it that little extra panache.

2nd best batsman ever. Best to watch in action

@nzzp said in Black Caps vs England Series:

@MN5 said in Black Caps vs England Series:

@No-Quarter said in Black Caps vs England Series:

@booboo said in Black Caps vs England Series:

@Crazy-Horse said in Black Caps vs England Series:

I fail to see the point of Philips. Not good enough at bowling, doesn't contribute enough with the bat and has brain farts I the field. Second thoughts, he's a traditional Black Caps all-rounder

He's made me think he's a really promising batsman. Just not delivered on that in this series.

The bowling and fielding is a bonus.

I want him to deliver on his primary role, which because of my fanboi-ing I'm sure he can ...

We haven't used Phillips well. He's at best a part time bowler, and his first class record suggests that - decent enough averages but has never bowled a huge amount of overs. So batting him at 7 just makes no sense. It makes even less sense when you consider we've been insisting on playing Blundell as an all rounder and batting him at 6 when leading up to that century he'd been averaging about 14 for the past year, on top of his glove work being generally untidy.

Swapping them around would benefit both players. It'd give Phillips a chance to bat with batsmen more instead of managing the tail, to see if he can replicate his 40 FC average at test level. It would also mean he can come out with a license to play his natural attacking game knowing there is still enough batting left to eek out some more runs if needed. For Blundell it'd take some pressure off his batting and hopefully allow him to focus a bit more on his glovework which is his primary role in the team.

This is an astonishingly well thought out post. Too much sense for it to be written by a Ferner !

Totally agree

@No-Quarter are you @Mauss ?

@No-Quarter is a millennial and therefor that post was most likely plagiarised from someone older and wiser.
I am unsure of @Mauss's generation so am unable to make gross generalisations about him but the post does really make sense and will inevitably not happen. It's annoying Phillips is not being utilised properly at the moment.

@barky1 said in Australia v India:

@NTA Basket Case of a side when you have a guy retiring mid-series. A strange dude, was Ashwin

He got out before it blew up.

1st ODI tonight. Weirdly, this is our first ODI this year. Sri Lanka have played 15 this year, so this is mostly an us thing. I'm a bit sad (I quite like ODI cricket), but also if dropping ODI in favour of more T20 cricket allows us to also run a full test program (by NZ standards) then I'm okay with that. The tour of India would not have been better if it had been three ODIs and two tests, for example.

@No-Quarter said in Black Caps tour of India:

@dogmeat said in Black Caps tour of India:

I see Kohli has dropped to 14th in the test batting rankings one point ahead of Darryl Mitchell. Kane and Ravindra in Top 10.

Somehow Matt Henry is ranked the 10th best all-rounder and (less surprisingly) 10th rated bowler

Kohli has always been a very good, but not great, test batsmen. A tier below Kane, Root and Smith. In ODIs and T20s though he's probably unmatched by any player in history which keeps him in the "fab 4" bracket.

It’s been a leanish period for Kohli with only 2 hundreds in his last 60 innings.

But he went through an unbelievable purple patch from about 2016-2019. that had him above those other 3 IMO.

A ten year old (ish) in the nineties:

@No-Quarter said in Black Caps v Sri Lanka Test Series:

watching our pop gun attack getting ground into the dust conceding 600/3.

and in 2024:

@Donsteppa said in Black Caps v Sri Lanka Test Series:

The ten year old cricketer in the house is still bemused at one team scoring 602/5

It's taken us a quarter of a century to improve by 2 wickets.

@Cyclops said in Afghanistan vs Black Caps, only test:

@African-Monkey

Random bit of trivia - kiwi umpire Steve Dunne was named to stand in two tests at his home ground, Carisbrook. Both were abandoned without a ball bowled (although the second was replaced with an unofficial one dayer).

For some reason, I feel like I came across that question before in quizzes haha.

@Canes4life said in Interview with the Naenae Express:

After reading this thread last week, I saw Chatfield over the weekend in the Hutt. Funny how life works.

Not really, the Hutt is very small and insular. I’m surprised you don’t see him every day.

@NTA said in T20 WC - Black Caps v PNG:

@MN5 said in T20 WC - Black Caps v PNG:

What kind of sicko are you ? Why ?

I like supporting the Tier 2 nations.

I prefer the term ‘minnows’….less demeaning

The decision to not play warm ups might have made more sense if this had been our first game.

@KiwiMurph It might fit insofar as financial considerations have overridden maximising team peformance.

Super rugby finishes and then this is when England is available to come. The guys responsible for balancing the books aren't going to say no - they're going to tell Razor to deal with it. Something similar may well have happened to Stead.

(Maybe we will see one of those games of three halves in the free weekend? Though that belongs in a separate thread. There's some Crusaders who will need some sort of hit out).

@Donsteppa said in T20 WC - Black Caps v Afghanistan:

Williamson is half right on this one in the NZ Herald.

“They had every opportunity to get a very good score. Our fielding didn’t help our cause - without a doubt that would be the most frustrating part for me. It is something we pride ourselves on, so that was very disappointing.”

There's been no visible pride in their fielding for a couple of seasons now.

That seems to have stretched to the batting too.

They all need a does of whatever Glenn Phillips has.

SA probably should have got home after that Klassens onslaught, but the impact of Bumrah on that pitch was also undeniable.
Still should have had enough though to go ass deep into Arshdeep in the last over

Waking up this morning with a hangover in Bangalore, fitting place to watch the final. Insanely emotional for the locals. Although was having more fun when SA looked to have it in the bag.

Although happy with the win some starting to see the BCCI influence being too strong, eg power over schedule impacting other teams for an ICC event

At least a contest for the final

2 -2 was a much better outcome than I feared. Especially after the lopsided scorecard in the first full game of the series. Nicely done.