NZ’s tournament consistency is bonkers
PLUS: Best of the weekend links
If you want to read about the All Blacks and Black Ferns in particular, with a dash of Kiwis, here’s yesterday’s newsletter($).
At a guess, the Black Caps would have rather played a South African side that relies heavily on pace in the spin-friendly environs of the Sydney Cricket Ground, but they can’t claim that they don’t know what they’re going to get from Pakistan.
A month ago the team in green survived the cold in Christchurch to win a tri-series final against New Zealand. There were mitigating factors for New Zealand’s demise, mostly the fact Pakistan were coming off a T20 Asia Cup campaign in which they made the final, while the home team’s preparation consisted of three ODIs against Australia in Cairns that came with varying levels of humiliation.
Still, New Zealand would have expected to win that on home turf and would have if they hadn’t farted away their last two overs - four runs with the bat off the final 11 balls - or used Ish Sodhi for a full complement of overs (his final one, the 15th of the innings, went for 25, flipping the win predictor from 65% in NZ’s favour to 88% for Pakistan).
It will be interesting to see if Gary Stead and Kane Williamson stick with Sodhi, who has had a decent tournament, over Michael Bracewell, who bowled brilliantly in that tri-series, but selection dilemmas aside, what is really ridiculous is that we’ve become so blasé about making another ICC tournament semifinal.
You’d thought I would have learned by now, but I have no problem admitting I didn’t think their run would continue. My pessimism was rooted in the idea that the Black Caps just didn’t have the batting firepower to go toe-to-toe with England and Australia in Australian conditions, but the Big Wet on the east coast has flipped the odds more towards the best bowling attacks and New Zealand’s is beautifully balanced - more so, strangely, than their test attack.
I was slow on the uptake, New Zealand weren’t, destroying Australia in game one, having a hiccup against England and recovering from the disappointment of losing their game against Afghanistan to weather to top their pool.
They were set to Face South Africa before the Proteas found a new way to lose at an ICC tournament, this time losing to the Netherlands.
Contrast South Africa’s ICC tournament fortunes to that of New Zealand who have made:
The final of the 2015 CWC;
The semis of the 2016 World T20;
The final of the 2019 CWC;
Won the inaugural World Test Championship;
The final of the 2021 World T20;
At least the semis of the 2022 World T20.
In an era when every conceivable advantage is handed to the sport’s biggest powerbrokers (who don’t include New Zealand, in case you’re wondering), it’s a remarkable run that we should never take for granted.
BEST OF THE LINKS
The Fifa World Cup starts soon. They have written a letter to all 32 participating nations, asking them to concentrate on football now. Ergo, stop referring to pesky human rights issues.
Oliver Holt at the Daily Mail is having none of that, none of that I tell you, writing a letter of his own to Fifa.
You ask that football not be ‘dragged into every ideological or political battle that exists’ but it was Fifa who dragged football into this battle and it was Fifa who dragged the rest of us into it as well.
Decisions have consequences. The organisation should have known when they awarded the 2022 World Cup to Qatar that this was not a controversy that would die away after a few weeks. Fifa created this. Don’t ask us to look the other way now. It is way too late for that.
There’s been a lot of words written about the power of the game shifting north, and by that we don’t just mean the money. As usual, it seems to be happening between World Cups. As it is, the results of the weekend were inconclusive.
Scotland and Italy scored wins against Fiji and Samoa respectively, but a struggling Springbok side almost upset Ireland, France needed a get-out-of-jail late try to defeat a fairly average Wallabies outfit, New Zealand ground a woeful Wales into the dust($) and…
Argentina just beat England at Twickenham. True story.
¡¡Triunfazo de Los Pumas!! indeed
My inclination is to be unkind when assessing the overall quality, competitiveness and “vibe” of this RLWC, but this morning’s Samoa-Tonga clash, won in an upset by Samoa 20-18, was everything you want from a tournament knockout game between two bitter rivals.
And this…
Former NBA sharpshooting legend Reggie Miller called out the current crop of players for their silence when it came to condemning the antisemitism of Brooklyn Nets wannabe iconoclast Kyrie Irving. He claimed that NBA players have not been backwards in coming forwards in using their platform to raise awareness of social issues, which is good, but it can’t be paired with inaction when it’s one of your own promoting hate.
USA Today columnist Mike Freeman, writes passionately about why antisemitism among Black athletes and his community is so hurtful. The whole piece is worth a read, but the crux of the message lies in these paragraphs.
There are many reasons this is problematic (the main one being it’s hurtful), but one of the biggest is that Black people are among the moral centres of this country. We built this nation (for free). We fought and bled and died to advance many of this nation’s laws that better everyone (many times battling alongside our Jewish allies). We have loved this country even when it has hated us. Because we have always seen its promise.
When the final story of race in America is written, and centuries from now we are truly a united nation, Black people will be its authors.
Every Irving or Ye racist uttering like this chips away at that moral authority we possess.
Nobody outside of Houston is ever going to love the Astros, but it is possible to wish ill on a club and wish an individual well. Dusty Baker, the Astros venerable manager who was brought in to put a friendly face on the organisation after a cheating scandal, finally got his World Series ring as a manager.
From ESPN:
He inherited an impossible situation, summoned in 2020 to shepherd a team that had fired its manager and general manager following the revelation that the Astros cheated during their prior championship season in 2017. Baker was beloved around the game, and his presence could bifurcate that of the Astros, who would be supported fanatically in Houston, booed and loathed everywhere else. But Baker refused to separate his own reputation from the team's. He embraced the Astros, warts and all, and tempered the negativity. He was brought in to play a role - more pop psychologist than in-the-weeds overlord - and he did it masterfully.
The final of squash’s Nations Cup in Tauranga sounded like a hoot, with England pipping New Zealand in the final (on countback!) thanks to a big assist from an Egyptian legend.
The NZ Open starts tomorrow at the same venue.
THIS WEEK
I’ve got a couple of big book-writing days coming up, but I’ll be locked onto the cricket on Wednesday night with a view to something for $ subscribers Thursday, and the usual week-ender on Friday.
Keep an eye on Curtis Heaphy from Central Districts...