The art of watching bad cricket
Playing cricket on rolled oats is harder than it looks; and a bit of Jordie Barrett bluster.
I have watched every ball of the Bangladesh series just so you don’t have to (you can thank me later).
WHAT IS IT?
A five-match T20 series between the No 4-ranked Black Caps and No 7-ranked Bangladesh. It’s a holdover from the tour that was postponed last winter due to a five-letter word beginning with C and ending with D that has been used in way too many sports stories over the past couple of years. The tour was meant to be a two-test series that would have contributed to the World Test Championship (you know, the one that New Zealand ended up winning), but with the World T20 looming it made sense to change formats to suit.
WHERE IS IT?
That’s simple. All five matches are taking place at Shere Bangla National Cricket Stadium in Mirpur, a sub-city of Bangladesh’s sprawling capital Dhaka, the 10th-largest city in the world and fourth-most densely populated.
(Do not let it ever be said that The Bounce is light on facts.)
WHAT’S THE SCORE?
Bangladesh are leading the series 2-1, seemingly confirming their pre-series favouritism, but this dramatically weakened New Zealand side was only a boundary from stealing game two thanks to skipper Tom Latham’s heady 65 not out. In fact, New Zealand are leading most of the series metrics, except the one that really counts.
WHAT’S BEEN HAPPENING?
Not nearly enough as it happens. It has been a grind. There have been times during matches two and three when every fibre in my right index finger has wanted to switch streams to the England v India test series, but this is the sort of sacrifice this newsletter is willing to make.
Let’s look at how back-to-front this series has been.
New Zealand have collectively scored at a strike rate of 95.3, which would give them a total of 114 extrapolated out to the full 20 overs. If you think that’s slow, the home side has scored at 84.8, which would get them to 102. There is a kicker in that Bangladesh didn’t have to rush to chase down NZ’s woeful 60 all out in the first match, so didn’t. Even still, it’s slow going, more bog-standard ODI pace than what you’d expect in a T20.
Of the 670 legal deliveries bowled in the series, just three have been hit over the ropes; India’s Lord Shardul Thakur hit four in the just-completed test against England. Just 53 have gone for four, a rate of nine per innings.
Of the 23 batters to have faced a ball in the series, 16 have strike rates below 100. For context, of the 21 batters who faced a ball in the T20 series between the two teams in New Zealand last summer, just six scored at less than a run per ball and four of those six faced eight balls or less.
Only Ben Sears, Doug Bracewell and Blair Tickner have economy rates higher than 8 runs per over in this series and they have bowled a grand total of four overs between them. Yes, that’s a long way to travel to bowl a couple of overs.
WHY?
Two reasons: conditions and personnel. Mirpur is a big ground with a wicket that seems to be curated by rolling Harraways Rolled Oats onto a base of Port Albert soil. It’s slow and tacky and near impossible to hit through the line.
This is not a strong New Zealand side. If I was to power rank the country’s best 15 T20 batsmen, it would go something like this: 1. Kane Williamson 2. Martin Guptill 3. Devon Conway 4. Glenn Phillips 5. Colin Munro 6. James Neesham 7. Will Young 8. Daryl Mitchell 9. Ross Taylor 10. Tom Latham 11=. Tim Seifert/ Finn Allen 13. Henry Nicholls 14. Mark Chapman 15. George Worker. Only those in bold are on this tour and Allen was only available from game three, having tested positive to Covid after arriving in Bangladesh.
The bowling is not dissimilar with the absence of Tim Southee, Lockie Ferguson, Kyle Jamieson, Adam Milne, Ish Sodhi, Mitchell Santner and Todd Astle, although the loss has not been as acute because in these conditions having the country’s best out-and-out spinner has been a boon.
Ajaz Patel has been brilliant, taking six wickets at a silly average and economy rate. He lost his central contract this winter and since then has contributed to a rare test series win in England and has been the Black Caps best player in Bangladesh. Memo to NZC: please pay him a bonus.
WHAT SHOULD WE MAKE OF THE TOUR?
The conditions have been disappointing, but nothing they didn’t expect. Asian teams don’t come to New Zealand and get slow turners, so why should the Black Caps go to Asia and expect wickets with pace in them.
But… you can be new to New Zealand and still play good cricket on the white-ball wickets that are prepared here (the first morning of a test match is a bit different). Nobody is playing good cricket on these pitches in Dhaka, not even the home team.
There has been dissent about the value of preparing these sorts of wickets even among the hometown fans. While it’s nice to turn over understrength Australian and New Zealand sides, this is the side Bangladesh are taking to the UAE and Oman for the World T20 and they know this will not help their preparation. Allrounder and best player Shakib Al Hasan has said the pitches are too “difficult” and coach Russell Domino claimed to want wickets that produced scores of around 150 to 160.
The spinners are loving it, but aren’t having to work hard for their wickets. To go back to the top briefly, it’s a grind and combined with a big empty stadium it’s a spectacle easier to write about than it is to watch.
As for New Zealand sending a weakened team - if all the country’s best players were available, some of these guys would be 3rd XI status - it’s a modern reality. It’s a sensible approach to a year where a T20 tour to Bangladesh is low on the priority list and helps broaden the base of talent that could feasibly elevate to 1st XI status in the near future.
As a dessert to the World Test Championship, however, it’s like asking for crème brûlée and getting tapioca.
WHAT SHOULD I HAVE BEEN WATCHING OUT FOR?
The biggest intrigue was going to be the performance of Rachin Ravindra and Ben Sears, two Wellingtonians with some serious advanced hype.
Ravindra had a nightmare debut, mirroring that of his Wellington teammate Finn Allen last summer by falling to a first-ball blonger. It takes a bit of ticker to come back from that and he has bowled well and shown glimpses of what he can do with the bat. Again, it’s hard to tell in such tricky conditions but gut feel tells me that he is not yet explosive enough to take full advantage of the powerplay in T20Is. More urgently, he needs to work on his running between the wickets, which is either lacking confidence or lazy - hopefully the latter. Will Young would be one of the least animated humans on Earth but he had every right to be frustrated by his partner’s lack of urgency in game three.
As for Sears, it was quickly obvious this is not the venue to showcase his wheels, rated by no less a batsman than Conway as one of the quickest going around. His time will come elsewhere.
Latham and Nicholls have looked the most accomplished batters, which is not surprising and yet a little disappointing given that T20 is easily their weakest format. It would have been nice to see Young take the senior batsman role but he has failed to build on a couple of starts.
He’s Don Bradman in comparison to Colin de Grandhomme, however, who has done a reverse Samson - the longer his hair gets, the worse his performance. At 35, his days in this format appear numbered.
Cole McConchie, the low-key Canterbury debutant, has looked useful with the ball in particular, though like Ravindra, it’s a dream venue to make your international debut as a spinner.
WHAT’S NEXT?
This squad plays the final two matches of this T20 series on Wednesday and Friday night, before heading to Rawalpindi to play Pakistan in three ODIs. A reconfigured squad - Sodhi, Mitchell, Chapman, Guptill and Astle come in; Ravindra, Nicholls, McConchie, Doug Bracewell, Scott Kuggeleijn and Jacob Duffy depart - then moves to Lahore for a T20 series.
Then it’s on to the World T20, where the Black Caps will be boosted by the return of their IPL stars.
THEY SAID IT…
“I thought they invented T20 to remove the boring middle overs of an ODI, not just be an entire game of those boring middle overs.” - Ben Hurley, cricket tragic, funny man.
JORDIE B: VILLAIN OR VICTIM?
Both.
As soon as the slow-motion replay came out it was only ever going to end badly for Barrett, whose right boot clearly came into contact with Marika Koroibete’s face (though not as damagingly as Brodie Retallick’s foot was to Michael Hooper’s head a little earlier).
Not only that, Barrett’s defence-mechanism technique of leading with his front leg is among the most exaggerated in the sport.
However, so much of rugby’s attack structures are based around the contestable kick that it is natural that back-three players develop space-eating techniques to combat the aerial bombardment. Their reward for going up and claiming the high kick is to be smashed the moment they hit the ground - that was effectively Barrett’s brace position.
You could make an argument, although it wouldn’t be your strongest work, that having not been in position to challenge in the air, Koroibete should not then have been close enough to wear some studs while Barrett was still airborne.
When you weigh it up, a red card just doesn’t pass the smell test for such a freakish occurrence and Dave Rennie probably got it right when he intimated that it was a good advertisement for the 20-minute sanction rather than it reducing the offending team to 14 men for the rest of the match.
Here, Gregor Paul argues that World Rugby have gone too far in their red-card crusade, while Rugby Pass’s Paul Smith says there’s a precedent for a long Barrett ban.
A quick thank you…
Too all those that signed up to The Bounce yesterday, cheers. Your support means a lot and it was a strange sensation watching the subscriptions roll in. To those who have immediately signed up for a paid subscription, it is deeply appreciated. Once we get out of this lockdown, your contributions will help me get out and about, to meet people and find the sort of stories I’m sure you’ll want to read.
Nice one - signed up a couple of days ago and now know what to get Dad for his birthday 👍
Nice mate, good first over