While most of New Zealand’s attention is on France I will also be keeping an eye on South Africa and the first World Twenty20 (or is that 20Twenty?) Championship.
It’s been a long time between internationals for the Black Caps - long enough to almost forget the heartbreak of Kingston in April. Actually I may never get over this particular piece of insanity:
McCullum c Silva b Muralitharan 0(1)
Anyway, we’re on the telly again at often ridiculous hours of the day and playing a fairly ridiculous game. As I like to tell people: if Test Cricket is Shakespeare and One Day Cricket is Chekhov then Twenty20 is “Everybody Loves Raymond” but I’ll be watching all the same.
And Fleming has announced his retirement from the One Day game and accepted his demotion as Captain of the Test side. I have mixed feelings about this (and the Bracewell-factor generally) but I feel confident that Vettori will do well considering the example that Fleming has set for him.
Michael Vaughan, at a press conference ahead of England’s final pool match against Kenya (today’s Guardian):
Do I think the problem persists? That is a hard question,“ he said, â€and if I’m honest I have to say yes, maybe it does go on. I have never experienced it within any of my teams or with any player I’ve played with or against but my gut feeling is that there is still something going on in the game. Nothing specific but just bad things that I’ve seen with certain passages of play or games that look slightly unusual. My gut feeling, and this is a huge statement I know, is that it is very hard to clear the whole world of cricket of it.
Mike Selvey comments:
…for me there still lurks doubt that all is not well in every case - nothing to put your finger on, but as with Vaughan just a nagging notion that all is not entirely well for no better reason than the pessimistic one that it can’t be - and I just wonder now how much that impacts on spectators and followers of the game now. Here is an analogy. There was once no finer sight in sport than an Olympic 100metres final. I’ve never seen one live but my father went to Rome in 1960 and told me of how the German sprinter Armin Hary outstripped the favoured Americans to take the title. Today, is there anyone who watches the event without regarding it as having about as much probity as World Federation Wrestling? It is a novelty show, which of course does a total disservice to those athletes who are determined to play the sport clean.
Cynics suspect malpractice everywhere, so even excellence through genuine endeavour alone, particularly if it involves improvement beyond the norm, is regarded with suspicion. But the consensus surrounding athletes and drugs seems to be that improved testing procedures have not eradicated the problem but merely has led to more sophisticated masking techniques. Our “gut instinct†tells us no longer to believe the evidence of our eyes.
And so it is with cricket and match fixing. The ACSU can scrutinise their matches all they like and monitor betting patterns on the subcontinent. These are skilled people with strong forensic backgrounds. But they are not cricketers. it takes a Vaughan, with what he calls his “gut instinct†but which in reality is accumulated intelligence, to spot the counterfeit coin amongst the stack of change.
I’m sitting here with tears in my eyes, and it’s not just because of the rotten cold that has confined me to quarters for the duration. This year New Zealand look like genuine contenders and the upsets have removed a few of our usual stumbling blocks (Pakistan have turfed us out twice in the last four tournaments). As I said to Jeremy Anderson yesterday, we look increasingly like possible winners this time around but the shadow cast by Woolmer’s murder means it will probably be a hollow victory and that’s a crying shame.
Over the last couple of weeks both the Penthouse and the Paramount have upgraded their websites - the Penthouse scores marks for having their session grid available only a click away from the front page and the Paramount scores bonus marks for having the session grid right there on the front page - no extra clicking.
Paramount loses serious marks because the film titles aren’t clickable! You have to go to another menu to read about the films. Counter-intuitive, dudes.
My favourite aspect (in a schadenfreude-y sort of way) of the Paramount’s new design is the lack of attention to detail, as displayed in the following image (snapped today, may have been fixed by the time you get there but it has been like that for more than three weeks):
Notice how they manage to mis-spell the title of the film and all the members of the cast. Re-spect to Altman, though, as they got him right.
To prove that I’m not picking on them, here are a couple of choice Wellington chalk-typos. The first from a couple of weeks ago outside <forget the name, on the corner of Cuba and Vivian>:
(click to enlarge)
And my favourite, from outside The Caledonian last Summer (the blackboards and fences have since been taken down by the new management):
(click to enlarge)
From The Spin, The Guardian’s occasional cricket e-mail:
New Zealand
Suddenly, you quite fancy them. A lower-middle order of Jacob Oram and Brendon McCullum means they are never out of the game; Shane Bond - assuming he doesn’t break down - could be the fastest man in the competition; and Stephen Fleming has regained the reputation he lost in England in 2004 as the smartest captain in the game. Lack of bowling depth and the occasional tendency of the top order to go awol are both concerns, but the off-spinner Jeetan Patel could be one of the competition’s unsung heroes. And they will field like Lou Vincents. Very backable dark horses.
One-day record since last World Cup: P88 W44 L39 T0 NR5
Last 10 matches: W5 L5
The stats are very interesting. I’ve always said that in One Day cricket the best NZ can ever really expect is to win as many as we lose and we are just ahead of that over the last four years.
“All I ask for is a little consistency†say the pundits. Well, you can only be consistently winning or consistently losing and the first one isn’t realistic so I’ll take the glorious inconsistency thanks.
But then again, all we need is seven wins in a row from March 17 and we are home free.
And the TAB has us at $7.00 with Australia at $2.75; South Africa $5.00 and India $8.50. I might get a piece of those odds come pay day.
