Oh we comfortably won on boundaries too, 42-38. Never in doubt.

@dogmeat said in Cricket: NZ vs England:

We have 6 guys averaging 40+ with the bat and 3 less than 30 with the ball.

Quite often a batsman will start off well and their average slowly declines but even CdG has played 28 innings - next lowest is Nicholls with 42.

The three bowlers have 693 wickets between them!!!

Our two "passengers" are Santner and Raval - hardly surprising as openers and spinners are our biggest traditional weaknesses but look at the match Santner had and Raval has the 7th best average of any Kiwi who has opened in 20+ innings and is our 11th highest scorer as an opener He also almost invariably succeeds in the main job of an opener - he sees off the new ball and thus makes it easier for the classy batsmen who follow.

We have won 32 tests this decade. It took us until March 1994 to record our 32nd test victory in our history!!!!!

Two CWC Finals as well. I never imagined we could have it so good. Hadlee's 17 year career only encompassed 22 victories - Fleming had 31 in 14 years

Raval is the kind of opener that would be singled out and dropped in past black cap team for 'not scoring fast enough' or 'creating pressure' while we ignore the fact that our middle order might look great but are wildly inconsistent.

In this team Kane and Ross protect Raval by being consistent enough to take advantage of the hard graft Raval does. He's the kind of role player that does the dirty work most don't really notice but is key to our wider success. I'm sure both Ross and Kane will average more with Raval and Latham opening.

He remains the tempting candidate to drop for the up and comers (Will Young), but I hope we resist the temptation to slot a promising middle order bat in as a makeshift opener. If an opener is bashing down the door by all means try him out, but we need to recognise that being a test opener requires a specific set of skills that not all batsmen will posses.

At the risk of the jinx, Latham is a bloody special player. He's almost certain to be our best ever test opener by the end of his career (excluding Dempster) , and is possibly there already.

But what really stands out to me is that about two or three years ago when the South Africans were here, he was in a real deep trough form wise, and I can remember watching him gradually pulling back, filing off his edges and getting back into form, particularly around reducing the balls he was flashing at outside off stump.

It was a fantastic display of self awareness and discipline and convinced me that he had what it would take to excel as a test cricketer.

@nzzp said in Indian Cricket Tour of NZ 2020:

@canefan said in Indian Cricket Tour of NZ 2020:

@No-Quarter said in Indian Cricket Tour of NZ 2020:

@canefan said in Indian Cricket Tour of NZ 2020:

@No-Quarter said in Indian Cricket Tour of NZ 2020:

What an absolute shellacking. Great stuff.

Puts the aussie fiasco into context. We've totally dominated India

It makes me even angrier about the Aus fiasco. We're so much better than the shitshow we put together for that tour. We just had our tactics all wrong, which I've talked about already on here

Forget the rankings. Aussie in Aussie is the hardest challenge in cricket. But I agree we didn't help ourselves on a host of levels

India in India would be right up there now. Those two, then daylight.

New Zealand in New Zealand looks like a handful too.

The more that result settles, the more satisfying it becomes.

To get an innings victory after a team has scored over 350 batting first feels like a significant win.

There were at most two periods inthe game where the English were ahead (just before Stokes got out and when Kane got out) and in the first case when we got an opening we were pretty ruthless and in the second we kept calm and pretty much the entire middle order stepped up.

Finally, Watling's innings was a truly special one and belongs in the pantheon of the all time great NZ innings. He looked like he could have batted another day if the match situation hadn't asked him to hit out. It was particularly special since it contributed to a win. Too many of our great innings are rear guards that delay the inevitable or force a draw.

@mn5 said in Cricket - NZ vs Sri Lanka:

@cyclops said in Cricket - NZ vs Sri Lanka:

That was such an incredible innings. The Sri Lankans were unsure about celebrating and the commentators so lost for words when he out. To score so fast, with so much control and without chances is unreal.

I shouldn't be pissed off.....but I am.

The little legend has set the bar so fucken high on himself that he's a victim of his own brilliance in one sense.

I'm not angry, just disappointed.

Fitting to have Williamson and Taylor together at the end. What a send off for Watling, I'm so glad that this side finally has some silverware to go with their incredible on field results.

This result and the England tour just before it put this side clearly ahead of every other NZ side bar the 80s squad that won in Australia and I think that's too close to call between those two now.

God I hope we get another tour of Australia in the next couple of years.

Hurricanes were the better team by some distance for about 41 minutes minus two plays. And although their game plan didn't look quite right for the first 39 they were equal to everything the crusaders could through at them.

Amazing grit from the crusaders to cling on for the win. Robertson has a gift for building never say die mentalities in squads. I'm a bitwworried about Read and Goodhue. Both are still solid, but well down on their peaks.

Feel for the canes, did everything except win in the second half.

@mariner4life said in New Zealand V Bangladesh Test III:

good, been resting on his laurels, what's he done for us lately?

Apart from the runs, the leadership, the holding together of our batting order in tough conditions, and the occasional spin bowling, what's Williamson ever done for us!

We should be making the RWC bigger not smaller. I'm not saying that should be right now, but I think world rugby should have a 20-30 year plan to expand RWCs to 24 teams (4 pools of 6) and then 32 (8 pools of 4).

Segregation won't make the '2nd tier' nations better. To be fair, neither does the RWC alone. World Rugby need to enable regular international competitions at all levels on a regular basis. The first step for that would be expanding RWC qualification. Let's toughen up auto qualifications; following the football example and only allow 2 auto qualies - the defenders and the hosts. Everyone else has to qualify. Having qualification pools stimulate international competition giving teams more regular game time. Have tiers in the qualification pools based on RWC finishes to avoid absolute mismatches but only to a point. Put seedings on the line too. So you might get an Italy-Georgia qualification match where both teams are going to qualify but it means the difference between a softer seeding and a tougher seeding. Getting the teams at the bottom of tier 1 playing the teams at the top of tier 2 more regularly will make the biggest difference to overall quality.

@KiwiPie

Mario Balotelli?

Probably spent a but too long injured but what about Daniel Sturridge?

That was a fun first round. Of course everyone feels good with their picks the day after, but notable picks for we were Travon Walker being number one. His physical traits are incredible but his production doesn't match. There's a good story for that with the role he was asked to play in that incredible Georgia defence not being one for racking up stats but when you could have had Aidan Hutchinson or Kayvon Thibodeux this pick is either going to look inspired or idiotic.

Derek Stingley is another interesting pick. Three years ago he was predicted to be the best player in the country. Injuries have held him back but plenty of guys fizzle out in college after bright starts. Again, the problem with the pick is going 3rd overall when you had other options. Sauce Gardener being the obvious alternative. The knock on Sauce is that he is too handsy and will get whistled out of the league compared with more tolerant dpi rules in college. But again, the Texans risk looking like idiots if Sauce is a probowler and Stingley flames out.

Cole Strange was probably the other surprising pick. The pats have a great record of developing OL players so you'd back them to get it right but he'd probably have been available in the second and maybe even the third. Surely someone like Karlaftis would have given them more value.

@Bovidae said in EPL 2021 / 2022:

So Arsenal shits the bed against 3 teams in the bottom half of the table and then goes to Stamford Bridge and puts 4 past Chelsea.

Peak Arsenal right there. I look forward to them beating Spurs and then losing to Everton in the final week to miss out on CL.

I know it's not top tier opposition (not that you'd know that from the start of our innings) but that's a great century from Latham.

I think we still need to bowl well to defend this but Latham has given our bowlers enough runs to have a fair chance.

@mimic

Maybe, although Bowles is something of a protege for him I suspect and he's moving into a front office role where I suspect he'll have a lot of authority (and the ear of the head coach).

I'm excited to see how Bowles goes with his second chance. I liked him when he was the head coach of the Jets, but he had a couple of major issues. Will be interesting to see if having had some time back in a coordinator role has given him a chance to reflect and improve.

@mariner4life said in NFL Season 2020/21/22:

This feels significant?

Every other team in the Division is adding tools. KC just sold one of their biggest

Seriously, their offence is Mahomes, Kelce, and Hill. This is a huge move.

Be a test of 'Andy Reid is an offensive genius' theories that's for sure. It's yet another strong wide receiver class so the chiefs might be backing themselves to find and develop a guy. A massive haul especially compared to what the Brown paid for Cooper.

Be interesting to see how Hill goes with Tua, he's struggled with the deep ball so does that affect Hill?

@kiwimurph

40m dead cap. Almost 20% of the total cap.

Baker still on the market but that's about it. Saints signing Winston to a 2 year deal. Can't see Baker moving anywhere now, and Jimmy will presumably stay at the 49ers. Maybe the Panthers might a move for one of them. Don't think either is a clear upgrade on Darnold though. Small improvement probably but they're probably better off with the picks and cap space. Very small chance that the Seahawks make a move. They seem happy with what they've got and more likely to treat Lock as a bridge while they develop a rookie.

Other than that, looks like the QB market is pretty much settled until draft day.

Okay so the Watson deal might be worse than I thought. His base salary this year is $1 million and he gets a 45m signing bonus. That means his cap hit this year is 10m. The low base salary might be the browns managing their cap or in might be because he's expecting a suspension and his base salary is pro rated for games missed.

I was expecting a fully guaranteed 5 year deal to be relatively evenly spread. But with the law hit this year than means the other 4 years his cap hit is going to be 55m. Plus if the trade him the signing bonus will all be charged at once rather than prorated across the life of the deal so even if they try to trade him they'll have to eat at least 9m per year remaining dead cap.

Yes the salary cap is projected to go up and yes there is a big new tv deal coming, but that hit is the biggest is the league. And making it fully guaranteed makes it impossible to get out.

The full structure isn't out yet, the will be interesting. I suspect it's going to be backloaded further so I wouldn't be surprised if the final years cap hits are over 60m. This deal is really a commitment for 6 or 7 years because they're going to have to extend him to spread the cap hits over the last couple of years. (Although that can probably be done with void years if he's below average).

If Watson is the 10th best QB in the league, the Browns might actually regret this deal. I think he needs to be top 5 for them to be clearly winning.

3 firsts and change. That's a lot of draft capital but the Browns roster is pretty good and if they're competing they'll be able to attract the top free agents.

230m for 5 years is expensive but doesn't reset the QB market. The fully guaranteed part might. I rate Watson and think he's a top 10 QB and an long as he keeps producing at that level the Browns will be happy. But there's no off ramp for them so if he struggles to adjust after a year off or if his suspension is worse than expected then they're dead.

AFC North catching up with the West. Burrow, Lamar and now Watson. Meanwhile Steelers have Rudolph and Trubisky in a competition... Might be a tough few years ahead for the Steelers.