@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.

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.

The biggest applause a batsmen being dismissed for 7 will ever get!

This has a little bit of a 2007 feel about it. We're about the best team in the world with fantastic depth in most positions. But we've had some signs of cracks and in our a few key positions we don't actually know who our best option is with lots of guys looking good but not consistent enough to lock down the position.

He looked very good when the Rams had the cap space to surround him with talent. Goff is a trap, just like Wentz. You either want a genuine franchise qb or an obvious mid tier candidate who is cheaper. Rams should have tried to trade Goff away instead.

I love the Saleh hire. This is the best I've felt about the jets leadership since Parcells. Also feels like the first time ownership are butting out and letting the football guys take charge. He's expected to bring Mike LaFleur with him too, so hopefully some of that Shanahan goodness for the offense.

Sam Darnold looked best in a West Coast offence as a rookie, could mean that they'll pass on a qb and either trade down or grab Sewell.

Bienenemy maybe hurt by the chiefs likely going all the way to the sb, no one willing to wait him out and risk missing out.

Jamieson up to 5 in the all rounder rankings; 21 in bowlers and 60ish in batsmen. Amusingly, he has a higher batting rating than Shubman Gill.

@RoninWC

Schotty is a disaster zone. I'm a jets fan and he is not well remembered. Rex might have had his flaws but its a massive what if about what might have been if he'd been allowed to pick his own OC. Not sure it's enough for the 2009 or 2010 teams get acrossthe line though.

The guy they really need to move on from is Wentz. Total deadweight for that franchise but his contract is probably unmovable.

There's nothing worse for a franchise than a qb that's just below franchise qb level at the end of their rookie deal.

@KiwiMurph said in Australia v India:

Paine might be in more hot water after calling Ashwin a dickhead.

Either way, he needs to get some new material. Didn't he use the exact same line on Kohli last time India toured?

I get that Kohli is a bit of a knob and their administrators think they run the world but when they play tests like this is pretty hard not to enjoy this Indian side.

This has been a crazy series. Had a bit of everything. Whatever happens from here the final test is going to be dynamite.

This would have been even tenser if we'd had another hour or so of Pant.

I just read that the browns were missing their two top cbs. Stick a fork in Big Ben. The Steelers are probably one of the few teams that pay 3 or 4 first round picks for Watson and still win that trade. They are so good at developing players. They've got to be thinking about it.

From 11-0 to wild card round loss to a divisional rival. That's gotta sting.