Plucky, unlucky and... wasteful?
The All Whites defeat capped a bad morning, as Notes from Trent Bridge #5 will testify
Well, that was a deflating morning in front of the gogglebox.
Fresh off another New Zealand bowling capitulation in the face of fearless and brilliant English batting, we crossed to Doha where the All Whites were one game away from their third appearance at a Fifa World Cup finals.
By now you all know how it went.
New Zealand had their fair share of bad luck, sure, but I was almost as interested in the coverage as I was the game.
Rugby reporters who follow the All Blacks have a reputation overseas as fans with keyboards, a point articulated by Eddie Jones at the previous World Cup.
There is an element of truth to it (during the 2017 Lions tour, even accounting for the biases of their respective audiences, the copy coming from both sides was partisan to the point of unreadable), but football reporting in New Zealand has historically taken the prize for fandom posing as journalism1.
There are sound societal reasons for this. Rugby has always been the national obsession and dominates the sporting discourse. When you’re fighting for column inches, the last thing you want to do is diss your product. Also, New Zealand football was truly an underdog story, with teams made up of chippies, accountants and ex-pat Brits trying to compete with the artistes of Europe and South America.
The hangover from that era is that our national football teams are still celebrated for plucky effort over efficiency - as if somehow when the beautiful game traveled to this outpost, goals were no longer the most relevant currency.
So my interest was piqued when reading these lines from Michael Burgess’ match report in the NZ Herald:
Never has a New Zealand side played so well on the world stage and got so little, as they couldn't convert numerous chances, after Costa Rica's soft third minute goal to Joel Campbell, to lose 1-0.
They could have won; they probably should have won; they outclassed their opponents for long periods but ended up with nothing.
El-Burg was a colleague for many years. He’s a diligent and dedicated reporter, one of the best in the country on the news-breaking side of the ball.
His framing of those paragraphs was curious to me. They are seemingly written with great sympathy, whereas I wonder whether the “couldn’t convert numerous chances” line should have been the angle, not incidental to a “New Zealand side [that] played so well on the world stage”.
To be fair, coach Danny Hay himself said: “We were sensational, even with 10 men we were dominating a team that’s now going to a World Cup. I thought we were a miles better team but we just needed to find a little bit of quality at the right time and couldn't find that tonight.”
It was time to turn the mirror on my own attitude. Is my cynicism unfair? I mean, until now I’ve deliberately left out the match’s major flashpoint, a VAR intervention that struck from the record a Chris Wood goal. It looked the wrong call to me and corrupt to at least two of my compadres.
In another exchange, I posited that the “we played well, we deserved better” narrative was perhaps a convenient trope to fall back on, but award-winning former reporter and documentary maker Stephen O’Meagher told me to pull my head in.
“Historically you’re right about much of NZ football - but this game wasn’t that,” he wrote. “A truly dodgy ref ruled against the All Whites throughout / and the disallowed goal was a joke. We were the dominant team, attacked - deserved better.”
Point taken, mostly2. I’d like to think I’m big enough to own my errors of judgement.
Over at Stuff, Andrew Voerman wrote that “this performance should have won them a few new fans”, which could be open to debate when paired with his colleague Phillip Rollo’s match ratings that rather deflated the notion this was a great All Whites performance. Top mark - Chris Wood 7.5/10; low mark - Kosta Barbarouses 1 - average mark 4.8. Zing!
At Newshub, Stephen Foote noted that profligacy as a key reason for the loss.
“New Zealand created 15 shots but only four were on target in contrast to just four from the Costa Ricans, of which three were on goal.”
The ref, understandably, gets a pasting, as does Fifa for the appointment of such an inexperienced official.
You know what, they’re right.
We woz wobbed!
Notes from Trent Bridge #5
My 1st XI of post-match thoughts.
(NB, for more delicate readers/ NZ cricket fans, some of this will be painful.)
1. It’s an exceptional effort to lose a test match having scored 553 in the first innings of a match. Only five teams have done it better (worse).
It gets better (worse). Only one team has lost a test with a higher match aggregate, and that was 74 years ago and England were playing against a team that had a chap by the name of Bradman playing.
Hey, I made it very clear this was going to be painful.
2. This tour bears some resemblance to the 0-3 shocker in Australia in 2019-20. On that occasion inflated expectations did not meet reality; Kane Williamson missed a test through illness; the opening batsmen underperformed; Matt Henry was preferred ahead of a bowler with a better record for a test; critical selection decisions backfired.
They have played far better cricket this time around, however.
3. In fairness to Henry, the Cantabrian has enjoyed his best run of form in tests over the past year. You could argue he was unlucky to miss out at Lord’s, so the decision to play him at Trent Bridge was hardly controversial. Although his match return of 2-195 at a cost of 4.64 per over was a little south of disappointing, it somehow wasn’t the worst.
4. I’m not sure you can explain away Tim Southee’s performance other than it has to be on a very short shortlist of the worst of his career. In an attack desperate for his leadership when Kyle Jamieson went down, Southee returned 0-154 and 1-67 while conceding at 5.14 per over. His opening over of England’s chase was an awful tone-setter - a collection of floated, military-medium half volleys and misdirected effort balls, with three finding the fence off Alex Lees’ bat.
There has been plenty of talk about Brendon McCullum’s IP being used to probe weaknesses in New Zealand’s batting line-up but there’s something more significant about the way they’ve brutally targeted Southee with the ball.
Southee has five wickets for the series at 72.6. Lees is the only player in England’s top five he has dismissed and in two consecutive run chases he has been rendered impotent to the point of unusable.
To make matters worse, in a match where New Zealand scored 837 runs, his contribution across two innings was four runs in four balls. While Daryl Mitchell sold him down the river in the second innings run out, while running the first Southee could clearly see Zak Crawley get to the ball quickly and could have nipped the shambles in the bud before turning for the second
5. The failure by New Zealand to apply a Band-Aid let alone a tourniquet to the run rate in either innings, spoke of a team that has a) not planned well strategically and doesn’t react well tactically, or b) has not been able to execute those plans. Neither option is that flash.
6. That flurry of wickets late on day four will be exhumed in the post-match analysis. While the manner of the dismissals ranged from disappointing to lame, if they wanted a shot at winning the series, shutting England out of the game was never an option. At the start of New Zealand’s second innings, if you offered Tom Latham 70-odd overs at England while defending 299, he would have likely taken it with a full complement of bowlers. Without Jamieson, you could quibble and say he’d probably have preferred a 320 lead and around 67 overs.
7. England have batted exceptionally and, if we take a step back, are playing far closer to what their ability suggests they should, even if they’ve endured a horrendous couple of years. In 20 years time, the next generation of fans might look at that scorecard and say, “Root, Bairstow, Stokes, Foakes, Broad and Anderson - what a team that was!”
8. They were, however, 93-4 with the best batter back in the hutch. That’s a winning position, just like having England 69-4 chasing 277 at Lord’s was. Fifth-wicket partnerships turned both tests, with Christchurch-born (no, I’ll never get sick of writing that) Stokes at the heart of both.
9. Jamieson’s injury is a worry. He will return home to New Zealand after an MRI scan revealed a stress-reaction to his lower left back and he will need four-to-six weeks rest. Blair Tickner, who was with the side in England for the early tour games, has been called into the squad ahead of the third Test at Leeds next week.
Tickner’s domestic teammate Dane Cleaver has received a call-up as a replacement for Cam Fletcher who has also been ruled out of the tour with a hamstring strain.
Neither will play, barring further injuries. If Tickner is preferred to Neil Wagner - I’ve written about his mind-cramping omission before - then we know the latter must have pranked Gary Stead with the old Marmite on the bed sheets trick, while Tom Blundell’s form with the bat has been excellent and sound enough with the gloves.
10. Despite the CEO being a former (modest) test player, New Zealand Cricket has always done well to separate church from state when it comes to administration weighing in on high performance. David White will be secretly cursing, however.
A huge opportunity to cash in on their status as newly minted world test champions was lost last summer through a combination of Covid-19, a lacklustre incoming tours schedule, the absence of their best player and poor performance.
This summer looks much better, but if this team looks like it’s in terminal decline, they’re going to struggle to sell tickets and subscriptions.
11. As Trent Boult apparently told his teammates: “This is Daryl Mitchell’s tour and we’re all just on it.” Imagine scoring 373 runs at an average of 124.3 across two tests and drinking in the bitter taste of defeat both times.
12th thought: They’ve been brilliantly entertaining test matches. We should not forget that.
Staggering figures from the IPL rights auction.
The combined value of the TV and digital rights for the next IPL cycle (2023-27) for the Indian subcontinent has more than doubled to US$5.10 billion. ESPNcricinfo wrote that the winning bid for Package A - TV rights for the Indian subcontinent - was US$7.36 million per match, while Package B - digital rights for the Indian subcontinent - attracted a winning bid of US$6.41m per match.
The successful bidders are yet to have been announced.
A wee addition to the skite reel.
Yesterday, sports minister Grant Robertson announced the formation of an independent body to strengthen and protect the integrity of the sport.
You might have already read it here.
“There have been a number of reports over the years into various sports where the athletes, from elite level to grassroots, have been let down by the system in one way or another. Protecting and enhancing integrity in sport and recreation is a key priority for me as Sport and Recreation Minister, and this new entity is a step in the right direction,” Robertson said.
Drug Free Sport NZ will be folded into the new entity along with some of the integrity functions currently performed by Sport NZ, including the recently established independent Sport and Recreation Complaints and Mediation Service.
Never more evident than the triumphal coverage of the All Whites’ 0-0 draw with Paraguay at the 2010 World Cup. When presented with an improbable risk-reward scenario, a place in the knockout stages of the World Cup, they opted to play without risk and were lauded for going through pool play undefeated.
I still prefer teams that score goals though. Can’t help it.
Any idea why we not playing a test against Ireland as part of that portion of the tour Dylan? Your so right about the targetting and destruction of Tim, always sad when our great servants get smashed - I am still trying to get over the Australian tour debacle, having gone over there to watch some of it, this doesn’t hurt quite as much as that does still!
the thing about Danny Hay's comment though is that we did find that one bit of quality - and it was wrongly ruled out. they may not have deserved a win on what we saw, but certainly a draw and extra time, or at the very least a different type of second half with the scoreline even.