Monday Mash-up: Bounce, back
An almost sport-free break, some bullets for the cricket, Belichick out and Jones in.
Welcome to the first Bounce of 2024. It’s not a long one, more of a PSA in fact, but we will be returning to normality at the end of the week once I’ve properly exfoliated and got the sand out of my hearing aids.
This is the longest break I’ve had from The Bounce and it’s been necessary, but also has reminded me how much I enjoy compiling this newsletter and putting my own spin on the events of the day. In the spirit of resolutions and the turning of new leaves, I would like to do a little more unique storytelling this year, as well as the customary analysis and links to the best work out there.
I’ve had a bit of a sports purge since compiling my yearender, getting most of 2023 out of the system and clearing some bandwidth for the following 11.5 months. I even opted for fiction and feature-length movies over the New Year, rather than the two cracking looking sports titles I have in my hands courtesy of Unity Books Auckland, which will be read and reviewed in the coming weeks, and a couple of sports docs I want to tick off the list.
Highlights:
Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead is a fantastic read and you have to hope that the right producers pick up the film option and hire the right director, because it has immense cinematic potential. And to demonstrate that you can never truly leave sport behind, there is a good chunk of the book that plays into the idea that the only time the wretchedly poor have any agency over their young lives is when they have athletic talent, and even then it is a fragile, tenuous type of power.
Highlight or lowlight? Back in what seems like another life, I was briefly a movie reviewer for the Sunday Star-Times. (Yes, I got paid to go to preview screenings and write a few fat paragraphs about the merits of the latest title to hit the multiplexes. No, I wasn’t very good at it, at one point opining that I didn’t think the 1999 remake of The Mummy starring Brendan Fraser would appeal to anybody - and they only went on to make another three movies and it is one of the top 50-grossing movie franchises of all time. Nailed it.) What I was never short of was an opinion, but I’ve watched a film this summer that has me completely flummoxed. By turns I thought Leave the World Behind, produced by the Obamas and starring Ethan Hawke, Julia Roberts, Mahershala Ali and Myha’la, was riveting and utterly disposable. I don’t want to leave any spoilers, and am not even sure I could accurately break down the narrative, but it certainly provoked my thoughts - I’m just not sure which ones.
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I wasn’t completely sport free. While I gave all of the Auckland tennis an air shot, I did get in front of some cricket. Not enough to talk about it with genuine authority, but I do have a few bullet-point observations that could be expanded upon over the next couple of months.
Those were two quality T20 performances against a good Pakistan side in Auckland and Hamilton. Finn Allen’s talent continues to frustrate and tantalise, Tim Southee keeps taking wickets and Adam Milne reminds us often of what could have been. Oh, and if keeping Kane Williamson on the park requires him to play no more than one ODI per year between World Cups, then I’m all for it.
A crowd of 20,000-plus turned up at Eden Park to watch the Black Caps at a time of year when many Aucklanders have ditched the city for beaches and boats. There is an audience for cricket in the city - it’s an enduring shame the game’s administrators and civic leaders can’t/ won’t deliver an appropriate venue.
I had to pull up some scorecards to remind myself what happened in the twin white-ball series against Bangladesh. What a waste of everybody’s time outside of a few fringe players. To summarise: Will Young batted nicely in the ODIs; in a performance befitting the venue, New Zealand stunk out Napier in both formats; it rained a lot at the Mount, and the Black Caps avoided a historic series defeat on Duckworth’s dime. Anything else happen?
Just because it was foreshadowed here, it doesn’t make South Africa’s squad to face New Zealand in a two-test series any more palatable.
Gary Stead [named] a development XI to play Bangladesh, but they will look positively World XI material compared to what South Africa plans to send out here in February to play two tests while their top players are locked into their own domestic T20 competition.
It is a travesty of a squad, with zero test centuries and less than 100 wickets between them. While there is an element of damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t, anything other than a comprehensive 2-0 victory will be an indictment on the Black Caps, and that’s a disappointing mindset to take into a series against a team that, in the red-ball format, always has their measure.
While broadly supportive of the decision last year to extend Stead’s contract until June 2025 (his record in ICC events dictated that), I’m starting to have serious doubts as to whether he is the right person to lead the Black Caps through an inevitable period of renewal? The farce around Rachin Ravindra’s availability and non-selection since the World Cup shows a certain amount of contempt for fans, and is also giving off a faint whiff of Will Young-career-skewering vibes.
I tuned in for Martin Guptill’s appreciation day because he deserved both my eyeballs for a few hours and the matchwinning 85 not out that accompanied it. It’s been a rare highlight in a bang-average Super Smash. The men’s is lacking star power and the women’s is badly lacking… runs. After 23 matches we have just five(!) 150+ scores. Four of those five totals have been fuelled by Melie Kerr (77*), Maddy Green (71), Suzie Bates (84*) and Kerr (88), so plus ça change. As a point of comparison, it took three matches of Australia’s WBBL to see five 150+ scores posted, and after 23 matches there had been 24 150+ scores, including rain-affected matches. Even given that Australia tends to produce conditions built for quicker scoring, it’s an unflattering comparison. I’ll have more to say on the Super Smash and its place in cricket’s fabric soon.
Pakistan probably played above themselves in their test series against Australia, but the 3-0 home win was inevitable. Patrick Cummins might fall short of flawless as a skipper, but what a bowler. I’m already salivating at the prospect of our batting lineup trying to repel him in our conditions next month.
As for the South Africa-India test series, for the love of Wes Armstrong1 can we please move the debate about poor pitch preparation away from boring Subcontinental v Anglo tropes? The pitch at Newlands, where the test finished in a day-and-a-half, was dreadful, with one large patch on a good length on or about off stump providing unplayable bounce and movement. It was a terrible pitch for test cricket, but not because it was prepared by a South African. The pitch at Mirpur recently where New Zealand beat Bangladesh in a low-scoring thriller was awful, too, but not because it was prepared by a Bangladeshi. The pitch in Rawalpindi when Australia toured Pakistan in 2022 was woeful (1185 runs, 14 wickets), but not because it was worked on by a Pakistani. They were terrible pitches because there was a ridiculous imbalance between bat and ball. And yet here we have Rohit Sharma, a statesman of the game: “When you are put up against a challenge like [Newlands], you come and face it. That’s what happens in India, but, in India on day one, if the pitch starts turning, people start talking about, ‘Puff of dust! Puff of dust!’ There [are] so [many] cracks here on the pitch. People are not looking at that.” Drivel. The pitch was rated unsatisfactory, so “people” were looking at it. If test cricket is to thrive, people need to see a contest, not conditions either hopelessly doctored to favour one side over another, or one discipline over another. Yes, in certain parts of the world you are going to see different characteristics to wickets and that’s exactly how it should be, but not at the expense of a genuine contest and the sport itself.
Just a couple of other stories I’ve noted. The NFL playoffs are underway and if you delay watching each half by 15 minutes and make clever use of the fast-forward button, they’re usually compelling entertainment. The New England Patriots will not be featuring because they were brutal. So bad in fact that the owners, the Kraft family, moved on from coach Bill Belichick, regarded by many as the greatest coach of all.
While he’s brought six Vince Lombardi Trophies to the Patriots, his tenure has been pockmarked by controversy and cantankerousness. He is at once hugely admired and widely detested.
I was interested to see the different perspectives offered by two journalists who have covered his teams.
Wrote Bart Hubbach, who covered Belichick while working for the Akron Beacon Journal and the New York Post: “He was pleasant to me at first because I was replacing one of his mortal enemies, but after [Art] Modell announced the move in November, he and the entire [Cleveland Browns] organisation went to war with the Cleveland media. I had no dealings with him again until I started covering the NFL for the Post in 2010, and by then, he was in full ‘impossible’ mode – especially with the New York media. I hated dealing with the modern Belichick. He’s just a miserable, vindictive person who went out of his way to make our jobs as difficult as possible. Having Brady really went to his head, because Belichick’s record without Brady really shows he is a mediocre coach, at best, who lucked into a generational talent.”
Said Gary Myers, the long-time NFL columnist for the New York Daily News who believes Belichick is the best coach in history: “People want to give all the credit to Brady now, but that’s based more on what’s happened since they split in 2020. Belichick drafted him in the sixth round when nobody else wanted him and then developed Brady into a Super Bowl champion.”
How did the NFL’s most-gilded partnership sour? There is first-class reporting in this ESPN story headlined: “It was the Patriot Way, until it wasn’t.”
Every loss during the Patriots’ 1-5 start added to the running tally of Belichick and Kraft’s record without Brady. As the math got worse, the relationship between Kraft and Belichick remained unchanged on the surface - they were businesslike and distant, two men in an unhappy marriage who couldn’t afford a divorce - and was decaying in private. The relationship between Jonathan Kraft and Belichick, never strong, worsened. Jonathan is protective over his father’s legacy and watched for years as Belichick refused to acknowledge him in the hallways and dismissed him as obsessed with optics. In late 2022, according to a first-hand account, which Jonathan denied this week through a team spokesperson, Jonathan was talking to friends when one of them brought up New England’s losing season.
‘That guy’s got to go,” he said about Belichick. “He’s done.”
“So how did I feel?” Jones says now, echoing my query about his crushing return to Australia. “It probably had a finality about it. I felt I’d let people down. But I also felt there was a role to play in trying to get Australia to see where they were at.”
He adds: “I’m happy to accept I failed. I couldn’t constitute the change I wanted in a short period but I gave it a really hard go and failed. Not good enough. I carry the scars.”
Anyway, that’ll do for starters. Time to turn the sports taps back on.
I look forward to getting back to writing for you again in 2024.
Obscure groundsman reference.
It's definitely a valid point that some of the batting in the women's Super Smash has left a bit to be desired. But on the other hand, I've been encouraged by the emergence of some pretty promising young bowlers, like Marama Downes, Bree Illing and PJ Watkins. As an example, here's the first wicket of Illing's career: https://www.facebook.com/share/v/Q4ABcRdMCy6YtajR/?mibextid=ZbWKwL
And we can't talk about the Super Smash without mentioning the outrageous all-round tournament that Amelia Kerr is having. Three unbeaten half-centuries and two five-wicket hauls in the last week alone!
Happy new year Dylan, glad you managed a decent break. I hope you feel refreshed and ready to face 2024.
A few comments on the Super Smash and Women’s SS as these have dominated my holiday viewing and I also managed to get to three games over the NY period. I wholeheartedly agree with your comments Dylan and would add the following:
- Standard: sometimes not especially high in both the SS and WSS. The BBL is obviously a much better standard when I switch over to watch it.
- Coverage: quodos to TVNZ for bringing it to us, it has been a real reminder to me if the power of free to air sports coverage. My 10 year old has religiously watched every game simply because of its accessibility. On the downside the commentary is really bad, and when I’m alone I watch with the TV on mute. Scotty Stevenson needs to stick to facilitating not making cricket insights as he can’t even yet distinguish between right and left handed batters (yes really).
- Depth: there are some green shoots coming through - Tim Robinson, Zak Foulkes, Zara Jetly, Muhammad Abbas to name a few but not enough and it is evident that our incumbent national players really lift the standard. Even the likes of Blundell and Nicholls have looked leagues above in a format that doesn’t play to their strengths. Amelia Kerr is a rock star that stands head and shoulders above all in the WSS.
- Production: when a really good player does present often they’re not NZ grown. Eg when I saw Holly Armitage for the Hinds I thought immediately “get her in the White Ferns” but turns out she’s English and not even in their top team....in the mens a lot of the better players not already in the BCs are South African products (Ferns, Delport etc). Great if they’re eligible but perhaps a question mark on our system.
- Predictability: some of the games have following a predictable and boring path of big scores posted and obviously not going to be mowed down within 5 overs of the reply. There’s a lack of gap hitting and power in both comps - the women’s being especially affected, sometimes the standard can be eye wateringly amateur.
Overall though I’m pleased we have vibrant feeder comps and it has been great to see the players coming through. It’d be nice to have a few more overseas pros to lift the standard and keep the comps credible but thats on the edges.