Wednesday, February 23, 2005

#2 ?!?! What The Hell ?!?!

I have been mentioning in some of my previous posts that New Zealand would have a fair shot at upsetting Australia. Unfortunately I must admit that they have proven me wrong. After the capitulation the other day one needs to again wonder at the direction in which the ODI game is going. By the ICC ratings for which I have a lot of respect, this is the #2 Team in the World and if that is going to be the gulf between the top 2 Teams the situation must be considered seriously. For the life of me, I cannot imagine England, South Africa, Pakistan, India, West Indies doing any better either. Only Sri Lanka under a set of severe constraints (top among which would be a slow low Premadasa wicket) might put up a slightly better show.

NZ need to sort out their own problems. They have no batsman to play the #3 role - I asked yesterday why Fleming who should be able to do it is not. The Sinclairs and the Papps for all their worth are not going to be daunting #3s at international level. The bowling is in shambles - Tuffey at his best can be described as a gentle giant who might throw in an odd winning performance here and there. He is out of form. They have oscillated between Styris, WIlson and now Adams and yet none of these really should fill anyone'e heart with terror. Mills has been so-so. They are desperately in need of Oram and preferrably Bond to recover from injuries. Until then it is upto the old warhorses Vettori and Cairns to lend some respectability to the "attack".

Finally, I did not comment on this before, but I simply loved Stephen Fleming's ban on using the A-word. That is the right attitude to have - but needs to be matched with performances. If they keep up that attitude and raise their game several notches NZ may still stand an outside chance.

2 comments:

Sandeep Shelke said...

hmm...esp the bowling looks pretty ordinary...they seem to have run out of ideas

Anonymous said...

Australia has the best team ever - no one besides South Africa can beat them.