Digging into the Mumbai massacre
Plus Mad Maxness, a strange Savea story and more...
That was not pretty. For the first time since New Year’s 2020 - 11 tests ago - the Black Caps laid an egg.
First things first: it’s incredibly difficult to play test cricket in India. It’s a home-team sport and only getting more so. India have won 15 of the last 20 tests they have played at home, drawing four and losing just the one test to England.
The margins of those 15 victories have been crazy: eight have been by an innings, the closest wickets margin is eight, the closest runs margin 75. It’s an astonishing run of dominance capped by this 372-run victory over the world test champions.
You can throw in the fact that New Zealand had no warm-up matches and were missing Kane Williamson, Devon Conway and Trent Boult, lost both tosses on wickets where it really matters and it’s a wickedly tough assignment.
All that aside, it was a desperately poor performance by New Zealand that can be broken down into three parts: technical, mental and selection.
Technical difficulty.
A friend asked me why our batters found it so hard to play on this Wankhede Stadium wicket when they didn’t look to hold any particular demons. While I disagree that it held no demons, New Zealand could have adjusted better.1
The best way to illustrate the vast gulf between what works in home conditions and what doesn’t work in Asia (and Australia, actually) is Will Young’s second innings dismissal, caught in close off the bowling of Ashwin for 20.
Young had batted pretty well, looked comfortable enough and yet was dismissed very, very softly, inside edging on to his thigh pad and into short leg’s hands.
In New Zealand that’s a perfectly legitimate shot-making decision: play with the turn, ride the gentle bounce, tuck it around the corner for one. It’s so bread-and-butter that it’s instinctive. The off spinner gets too straight, you work a single. Every time.
On wickets like Wankhede and Perth, it’s batting harakiri. I mention Perth because Young’s wicket reminded me of another classy right-hander’s soft downfall.
I can’t post the video here but if you click this link and skip forward to the 2m 14s mark you’ll see a near identical dismissal, this time Williamson caught in close by Matthew Wade from a Nathan Lyon ball that turns and bounces.
It’s a shot you need to drum out of your game in the nets and more importantly in preparation games, but of course they don’t get that opportunity.
Technically, most of the top order made some nice adjustments between the first-innings shemozzle and the second, but the margin for error facing Ravichandran Ashwin, Axar Patel and Jayant Yadav on pitches that turn and bounce is tiny, and even then you might get one that’s too good.
That, in turn, starts to play on your mind.
Mental faculty.
There was a mindset shift in the second innings, with the top order collectively deciding they were not going to merely wait for their number to be called so played with more intent. In itself this was an admission that they didn’t have the technique to survive for long periods - that is to say, multiple sessions - on this pitch against this attack.
It was an understandable call. The test was lost on day two, not three, so the best they could hope for was to take some lessons for when they inevitably face similar conditions on future tours.
One player who almost certainly won’t be batting again in India in an international is Ross Taylor.
That was the knock of a guy who had surrendered; who no longer had a method he believed in. He was gifted four runs that should have been byes when he missed an ugly swipe that nearly bowled him but evaded the keeper too. For most No 4s, that would have been the signal to thank your lucky stars and to knuckle down, for Taylor it was carte blanche to keep slogging.
“There were a couple of dismissals you could look at and think, ‘Geez, could we have done that a little bit better?’,” New Zealand coach Gary Stead would admit.
It was super ugly, but not necessarily unexpected. His past 10 innings in India, which corresponds to the last two tours, reads 6, 1, 2, 11, 32, 0, 4, 36, 17, 0. Yikes!
Taylor needs three more tests to equal Daniel Vettori’s record, two more to equal his NZ record (Vettori played one test for a World XI). If you were to say that his continuing selection in the New Zealand side would be more due to sentimental reasons than performance, you’d get little argument from this corner.
That’s a hell of a shame because he’s an all-timer and he makes a lie of the mantra that you’re only as good as your last innings, because he’s a hell of a lot better than that.
Unnatural selection.
The selection of Will Somerville, who looked ineffective in Kanpur, over Neil Wagner defies logic on multiple levels. You could raise a statistical argument around it due to the past success of spin bowlers on Wankhede - which was borne out in this game - but the snub of Wagner and the faith in Somerville demonstrated a lack of emotional intelligence, which even in this “Moneyball” era still matters.
Somerville’s confidence was shot to ribbons after going wicketless in Kanpur. It’s the selector’s job to recognise this. In Mumbai he bowled just 29 overs in the match, taking a combined 0-139 at nearly five runs per over. It was a hard-to-watch exercise in futility, with the rest of the spinners combined taking 33 wickets at less than three per over (including, of course, Ajaz Patel taking 10-119 in India’s first innings, four in the second and bowling a staggering 73.5 overs).
The selection had shades of Jeet Raval in Australia, where Stead and, presumably, Williamson seemed to be the last people to realise that he was so chronically out of form and confidence that it was cruel to keep picking him.
Somerville seems to be a phlegmatic guy with a cool back story but if it was debatable picking him for the first test ahead of one of the country’s greatest quicks, a true one-of-a-kind difference maker, it was plain silly a second time around.
There should also be question marks raised about the use of Daryl Mitchell at No 3. Knowing how important a good start is on these wickets, it’s hard to reconcile the guy who has played five test innings, all at No 7, being asked to set the platform and protect Taylor and Henry Nicholls.
Mitchell is rapidly becoming one of my favourite cricketers. He’s a guy who will clearly do anything he’s asked for the good of the team and invariably does it well, as evidenced by his 60 in the second innings at Mumbai.
You could argue that it’s a massive show of faith to give him Williamson’s spot but instead it sent the message that the glamour boys in the middle of the order were untouchable.
It was a golden opportunity missed for Nicholls to take senior batter status in the absence of Williamson; to be the table setter rather than the guy who feasts after it has been laid out.
The truth is, though, it’s just really hard to play test cricket away from home. Very few sides do it well because very few sides get to prepare properly. When you’re a team like New Zealand that generally gets two-match series, you’ve got no time to learn on the fly.
It’s right to expect better though. The world champion tag carries expectations. The Black Caps seriously undersold themselves technically, mentally and on the team sheet in Mumbai.
THE ASHES HIGH FLYERS
The Ashes start on Wednesday. Time for a trip down memory lane when two England players buzzed the field during a warm-up match in a Tiger Moth. It didn’t end well for one of them.
MAD MAX?
If you get a chance, get yourself in front of some highlights of the Saudi Arabia Grand Prix. You’ll have to hold your nose a little if you’re not a fan of sportswashing, but the action is off the charts and quite honestly bonkers. Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen, who seems to be losing his grip a little, are now on equal points going into the season’s final race.
Global Twitterness seems to be in agreement that Max has gone mad…
… but Dutch Twitter sees it a bit differently.
SAVEA’S STRANGE POWER PLAY
This is a really weird story that I don’t understand… but I want to. The relevant quote (which is long):
“When players start talking to each other around their contract and what they’re on, that puts power to the players because what agents will tell them, who they’re negotiating with tell them, it could be so different to what the players [are actually getting],” Savea said. “Say in my position, I might be the best playing loosie so far for the last year and a bit, or two years, and then you have another loosie who’s probably there as well but he’s just behind you. And then you come to negotiation and the agent or NZR are going, ‘This is a great deal, mate. You’re on fire. This is what we usually offer guys that are on 50 caps, that are playing well, starting.’
“Obviously you believe [what they tell you], sign it, but then you go talk to the guy that’s just behind you and you go, ‘Hey bro, do you mind if you let me know what you’re on?’ And he sends you a contract and he’s on 50 percent more than what you’ve been offered. That's when you go, ‘Hold on, I’ve been starting the last two years. This guy's behind me but my new contract offer is… 30 per cent or 50 per cent [less] than what he’s on.’ That’s when people start figuring it out, start going, ‘Hey, they’re telling me lies.’ And that’s where the negotiating, bargaining [comes in]. Agents and obviously the people we’re negotiating with don’t like it, but that just puts the power to the players and it allows you to pretty much negotiate more and provide for the family more.”
So is that what happened? Did Savea once sign a contract and subsequently find out he was getting way less than his teammate just behind him. Does this sort of thing happen often? Are New Zealand agents - who by definition are employed to get the best possible deal for their clients - snakes or, alternatively, useless.
What is going on?
I wouldn’t have thought it was very difficult to get a great multi-year deal for Savea, one of the world’s best players, at this time, but obviously a bit of player power was what was required… I think?
PIC OF THE WEEKEND I
PIC OF THE WEEKEND II
I’m not sure what the metric is for “demons”. One of my bugbears is when cricket journalists downplay the difficulty of opposing teams batting on our first morning green-tops by saying “it wasn’t doing that much”. Any combination of swing and seam is fiendishly tricky. Likewise any degree of turn combined with bounce is “demonic” for teams that don’t grow up on those wickets.