New Zealand v South Africa preview

Another drought is almost over and in three days we will have a Test match for the first time in a month. New Zealand host South Africa for what could be a very interesting series. There’s certainly a lot at stake, a 3-0 win for the tourists will see them climb to the top of the ICC rankings for the first time since they went top in the aftermath of England’s victory in the 2009 Ashes. (They were actually leapfrogged by third placed England after we whitewashed India.) At the same time, a Kiwi victory by any margin would see the Saffers fall to third and even a draw will be enough for New Zealand to go ahead of the West Indies in the rankings. I like South Africa, and generally cheer for them, but I’ll be supporting the Kiwis/the rain!

Of course, South Africa are massive favourites. New Zealand, despite the wins against Australia and Zimbabwe, still sit eighth in the table, just above Bangladesh. South Africa didn’t have an incredible home summer, 1-1 against Australia and 2-1 against Sri Lanka, but they have a lot about which to be optimistic. Dale Styen is still as good as he ever was and now they have Vernon Philander and Marchant De Lange to support him, giving them a very powerful pace attack. On the friendly wickets of New Zealand they should be able to run riot. Even in the victory at Hobart the Kiwis’ batting looked fragile and I don’t expect a lot from them against the world class attack of South Africa. What New Zealand will have to do is find a batsman who can play a proper innings. (Other than Vettori.) Ross Taylor stood up against Zimbabwe and was supported by Brendan McCullum (surprisingly) and the young wicketkeeper BJ Watling. They will find the going orders of magnitude tougher against South Africa, but if they are going to get anything out of the series they are going to need more innings like those. Their best hope might be for Philander and De Lange to fail to replicate their form from South Africa’s home summer. Both are young and fairly unproven so that is a possibility. There is also the fact that there are no warmups ahead of the Test series, though that could work both ways. Certainly the last thing New Zealand will want is for McCullum to try to play an ODI innings against Steyn in a Test.

It might be a bit more interesting when South Africa bat though. New Zealand are developing a very good attack of their own. Chris Martin and Doug Bracewell aren’t as good as the South Africans, however, and they have a much tougher batting order against whom to bowl. Still, South Africa collapsed badly against Sri Lanka twice at home, so the vulnerabilities are there. They still have questions to answer about the top of the order ahead of their all-important trip to England next summer, certainly, and whilst this series will provide them a good chance to try to answer those questions it also means the Kiwis have a potential opening. If South Africa simply bat to the best of their ability they should be able to post comfortable scores, but I think they underestimate New Zealand at their peril. It wasn’t the greatest ever Australian lineup that collapsed in Hobart, but nor was it their worst. It contained the same group of players that went on to get big scores against India. If South Africa are too casual New Zealand have the talent to spring a surprise.

Ultimately, I don’t think South Africa will take anything lightly and should ease to victory. As promising as New Zealand have looked in their last two Tests there is still a very large gulf in class. I think it can be useful to compare sides by forming a combined XI, and in this case I think the only Kiwi would be Daniel Vettori. It pains me, but I think South Africa are a good enough side that they will win 3-0.

England win by 48 runs

The win makes it two in two for England’s women and this one was never in doubt. England’s top three of Edwards, Marsh and Taylor scored 33, 48 and 45 respectively and all at good rates to set up England’s total. The partnership of Edwards and Marsh was particularly impressive, as they went along at almost ten per over. Even after dismissing them in quick succession, the Kiwis never really found a way to contain the scoring. Taylor played another good innings whilst the batsmen farther down added nice cameos. New Zealand ended up using seven bowlers in the innings and all of them went for at least seven an over. I was hoping near the end of the innings that we could get up to 170, but the average completed first innings score in women’s T20 is only 126, so 166 was still more than handy.

New Zealand’s run chase was rather odd though. They started poorly, getting only two of the first over before Anya Shrubsole, heroine from the first match, delivered a wicket maiden. After four overs New Zealand found themselves 9-1 and already needing almost ten per over to win. That prompted the only period of the match in which they really looked like going for it. McGlashan in particular made a concerted effort to find the ropes and just about managed to keep the Kiwis in touch for a couple of overs. Once they powerplay ended though they went back to knocking the ball for singles. I can understand keeping wickets in hand for a late assault, but they waited far too late. They went over six overs after with only a solitary six (followed by a wicket) as the only boundary, after which they needed 12 per over to win. By the time they actually started an assault in the 15th over the rate required was over 13 and all they could do was slog. Seeing as they had to get a four off of almost everything they saw, it was not surprising that it didn’t come off and they lost four wickets in two overs. What was surprising was that after that they went back to hitting singles! Part of that was some very good containing bowling from England, of course, but when one’s side needs 17 per over to win there is no excuse for not trying to clear the infield. Only boundaries were going to be enough and they did not seem to be willing to take the risks to get them. They kept losing wickets anyway, however, and their final tally of 118 all out was fairly pathetic.

With England now 2-0 up and the Kiwis having looked pretty poor twice the series is there for the taking. New Zealand may be able to sneak a win, but I’m sticking with my original 4-1 prediction.

England win by six/nine wickets

Suddenly I’m writing the words ‘England win’ a lot. A couple of nights ago the women’s side won their first T20 by six wickets. It was rather closer than it ought to have been, Anya Shrubsole took 5-11 (all five bowled or lbw) in four overs as the Kiwis finished on 80-9. It was at this point that I made the in hindsight ill-advised comment ‘should be a straightforward chase’ on Twitter. Needless to say we got bogged down and after losing a few wickets were actually behind the rate for a time. For the Kiwis, Kate Broadmore at one point had figures of 2.2-2-0-1. Unlike Shrubsole, however, she couldn’t take more than that one wicket and Sarah Taylor hit a composed and unbeaten 31 off 34 to see England home with six wickets and 14 balls to spare. Never in doubt… The second match of the series is tonight/tomorrow morning and whilst New Zealand will take heart from their bowling display I’m tipping England to win again.

The far more surprising win was for the men’s side. If I had known before the tour that there would be 3-0 scorelines in both the Test and ODI series I would have assumed that we had won the Tests and been hammered in the ODIs. As it was, England turned in one of their most comprehensive ever ODI wins away from home. Only three times previously have England played top tier opposition away from home and chased down a target with more balls to spare than the 76 balls to spare that they had in this match. The most recent was against South Africa in November 2009 when England lost three wickets en route to 121 off 31.2 overs. England also won with 94 balls remaining at the MCG in January 1979, a 40-over ODI in which Geoffery Boycott scored an unbeaten 39 off 107 deliveries. England took just 28.2 overs to chase down the 102 they needed for victory and I’m sure the crowd went home thinking that they got their money’s worth. I think a case could be made that this was a more comprehensive victory than any of those, however. England looked today like they could easily have chased down another hundred runs. There were standout performances from Cook and Finn again, but KP was the real star. He looked today like the KP of old, a man bristling with intent and for once not likely to give his wicket away. Once he got into his stride the only thing that looked like it might stop him from reaching three figures was if England ran out of runs to chase. As it was, Cook’s dismissal meant that KP could get to an unbeaten 111, his joint highest ODI score.

This puts England in a very rare position for overseas ODI series. Excluding Bangladesh and Zimbabwe, the last time England won an overseas ODI series by two or more matches was a 3-0 whitewash of New Zealand in 1992. If England can win the last match, it will be only the second time overseas and fifth time ever that England have won four or more matches in an ODI series.

New Zealand v Zimbabwe preview

It’s another one-off Test between these two, following the one in Zimbabwe a few months ago. The Kiwis wont that one, and on form they should certainly do the double next week. There are still a lot holes in their side though, and the historic victory over a weak Australia should not disguise that.

The Kiwis well make at least two, probably three, changes to the side that won at Hobart. Jesse Ryder and Reece Young have been left out of the squad, the former due to the calf injury that he sustained in Zimbabwe. Young might feel a bit hard done by; he has been dropped for his batting after some very solid glovework. I think the selectors can justify the decision though, their top order never really fired in Australia and some insurance down the order (in addition to Vettori). BJ Watling and Kruger van Wyk are the two possible replacements and are both playing in the current warmup match. Watling looks like the front runner at the moment, being run out for 84 as opposed to van Wyk’s nick behind for five. The other likely change for the Kiwis is Vettori’s presumed return after being injured for the Hobart Test. As well as New Zealand bowled there I cannot see them not bringing Vettori back in place of one of the seamers. Trent Boult originally came into the side in place of Vettori, so he is most likely to miss out. That said, he arguably out-bowled Southee at Hobart and this pitch is likely to be similar. It will be interesting to see what the selectors do before the Test.

Zimbabwe very nearly beat New Zealand last time these two sides met, but I think they’ll have a lot more trouble in the less batting friendly conditions. They have not played in properly foreign conditions in several years now and I don’t think one warmup match will be enough for them. They might be able to knock the Kiwis over cheaply in one of the innings, but I don’t think their batsmen will adjust quickly enough. They also have the disadvantage of not having played since that match against New Zealand at the beginning of November.

I think the match will be a low scoring affair, but a good innings by the Kiwis (probably anchored by a Vettori ton) will be enough to give them a relatively comfortable win. I think the margin of victory will be about 150 runs.

Ten best sporting moments of 2011

I know the sporting year isn’t over yet. I actually had a conversation on Twitter about whether I ought to write a ‘year end’ style post or save it for after the Test. I decided to save my full year in review post for later, but at the same time I would be very surprised if anything happened that warranted an inclusion on this list. If I’m wrong I can always write a revision as well, so with that in mind here are my top ten sporting moments of 2011:

10 – New Zealand winning the Hobart Test
I know my Aussie readers won’t like this, but it was a pretty important moment. New Zealanders probably care more about winning the Rugby World Cup, but they had not won a Test in Australia for 26 years before this. Doug Bracewell may be a great find for the Kiwis and the conclusion of the match was one of the most thrilling you will see.

9 – Tigers winning Game 5 of the ALDS
I love watching the Yankees lose. I love watching the Yankees lose deciding games in the playoffs even more. But most of all I love watching Alex Rodriguez strike out to lose a deciding game in the playoffs in front of a very put out Yankee Stadium crowd.

8 – Royals winning a three game series in New York
The Royals spent most of the month of April this year in or near first place. (It’s true, look it up.) Whilst losing six in a row to the Rangers and Indians at the end of April basically put an end to any notion of contending, there were still bright spots after that. In the second week of May the Royals travelled to New York and won two out of three against the Yankees. The deciding game of the series saw the Royals score six runs in the second inning, including Eric Hosmer’s second major league home run and some terrible defensive mistakes by the Yankees. It was the Royals first series win in New York since 1999.

7 – Manchester United 1-6 Manchester City
It was the match that that caused the media to accept City as genuine title contenders. More importantly it was the match that made United supporters very cross and thus made Liverpool supporters like myself very happy.

6 – Australia reduced to 21-9 at Cape Town
With apologies to my Australian readers. Though as much as I enjoyed this I was more astonished to watch the innings unfold. On no fewer than three occasions I thought there must surely be a recovery, surely they couldn’t lose another wicket. I was wrong on all three occasions, as by the time the recovery did come I had stopped expecting it. Almost as amazing as the innings itself was the shot selection of Brad Haddin and the fact that he wasn’t immediately dropped because of it. Both defy belief.

5 – England winning the Cardiff Test
I already used this in my best moments in English cricket this year, so there isn’t a lot more to say. Nonetheless, it was incredible watching England go from just wanting a few wickets to Sri Lanka not even coming close to saving the Test and certainly belongs on this list as well.

4 – Virender Sehwag making a king pair at Edgbaton/Stuart Broad’s Trent Bridge hat trick
I’ve included these together for their similarity, not only because they both involve Indian wickets falling cheaply. Broad’s hat trick marked the end of the last time India would have an advantage in the series, but I think Sehwag’s king pair marked the last time India had any real hope. It was also a moment of personal pleasure, because Sehwag is massively overrated. He has a good record on the flat pitches of the subcontinent and that is it; his aggression is not suited for English conditions or anywhere the ball does a bit. After the second Test I read about and saw Indians claiming that he would save the series for them and I rather enjoyed being vindicated.

3 – Cardinals winning Game 6 of the World Series
I’m a Royals fan, but years of living amongst Cardinals fans in Kirksville made me rather sympathetic to them. (Though I always hated when they would gripe about ‘barely being .500’ or some such.) Add that to the fact that I hate the Texas Rangers and I was definitely cheering for the Cardinals in the last World Series. Even if I hadn’t, however, I think their multiple comebacks in Game 6 would have had to rank high on a list of best sporting moments, as it was absolutely astonishing.

2 & 1 – Lancashire winning the County Championship and England winning the Ashes
How could I not copy these from my first list? England winning the Ashes in Australia is the only thing that could possibly trump Lancashire winning the title outright. Neither had ever happened before in my lifetime and for them both to happen this year is almost an embarrassment of riches. I have little doubt they will be on a list of best moments in the decade should I make one in 2020.

Edited to add: The Guardian have produced their list of cricketing moments, but there is a lot of World Cup stuff at the expense of Lancs.

Hobart preview

The second test of the Australia v New Zealand series starts in a few hours. The Aussies are heavy favourites after a convincing win at the Gabba and I don’t see the Kiwis putting up much more of a fight. Although the wicket in Hobart should be more akin to what the Kiwis are used and I think they probably will bat better, to challenge even a weakened Australia they will have to improve almost beyond recognition. They will also have to field far better than they did in the first test, and I doubt they will have had enough time to improve noticeably.

Theoretically the Australians have a strong home field advantage in Hobart having never lost a test there, but there are some considerable caveats to that statistic. The matches there tend to be against weaker sides; in addition to New Zealand only Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the West Indies (in 2005) have played in Tasmania. Also, the Bellerive Oval only started hosting matches in 1989, so most of the previous nine matches were during Australia’s period of dominance. New Zealand’s bowling coach is very familiar with the ground having played in Tasmania for ten years during his first class career, so I don’t think the Aussies will actually have a marked home field advantage. That said, I don’t think they will need any home field advantage to overcome New Zealand.

The most interesting part of the test will probably be the selection battles ahead of the series against India. Two batsmen are going to be dropped when Watson and Marsh return and all of them bar Clarke are candidates to make way. The obvious direct competitions are Warner v Hughes to see who will survive the return of Watson and Khawaja v Ponting v Hussey to see who will make way for Marsh. But since Watson can, and many argue should, bat down the order it will probably not be so straight forward. Right now Hughes and Hussey are probably under the most pressure and will need centuries to ensure they retain their place on Boxing Day. Hughes has a good record in first class matches in Hobart, but the conditions are expected to favour swing and seam and I think he will find the going very difficult.

As far as the result of the match is concerned I’m predicting another heavy victory for Australia, by 250 runs or eight wickets.

Australia win by nine wickets

To say that New Zealand played poorly in the first Test is an understatement. Australia did play reasonably well, but the Kiwis failed to put up any sustained fight. The scoreline is probably not indicative of the gulf in talent between the two sides, but it was certainly a fair result given how they played.

The New Zealand top order was the most culpable. It can be reasonably said that they bat down to seven with Vettori, but those seven batsmen averaged just 28 in the match. Without the first innings heroics of Vettori and Brownlie it falls to just 16. Of the 13 top order dismissals, no fewer than nine of them were needless. (That’s including Vettori’s suicidal run out in the first innings, though he deserves credit for having played well up until then.) They looked like they had not realised they were no longer playing one day cricket and were allowed to leave balls outside off stump. When they were in the field they let the Australians off the hook multiple times. They dropped catches, took wickets off no-balls and possibly most damningly allowed Mitchell Starc to score 32 not out on debut as Australia put the match out of realistic reach. They will have a lot on which to work before the next Test.

Australia do deserve some credit. They bowled well enough to induce the brainless errors by the Kiwis and batted with discipline for the most part. (With the exception of Phil Hughes, who is probably nearing the end of his career.) It’s a bit difficult to determine how effective the new Australian bowlers really were; with New Zealand batting poorly and only Peter Siddle against whom to compare them there is an element of guesswork. I think Pattinson looked like a genuinely good find though. He bowled with proper pace and hostility and did pick up a couple of wickets that were not the direct result of poor batting. Lyon looks like he will be the first choice spinner for the foreseeable future, which would finally bring some stability to the role. I don’t think Mitchell Starc had much of a debut though, his unbeaten 32 notwithstanding. He took only two wickets in the match, both off poor shots by Kiwis in the first innings (McCullum and Ryder). He’s the most likely to go when Cummins returns, unless Clarke wants to play a very inexperienced attack against India.

I can’t really see New Zealand winning the second Test, or any Test against a side better than Bangladesh at the moment. They need to improve all facets of their game in the longest format, as right now they are fielding an XI who don’t seem to know how the game is supposed to be played.

Imprecision

It’s only the third day of the first Test between Australia and New Zealand, but I have been struck by how imprecise New Zealand have been. They have talented players. Vettori is the obvious example, but Jesse Ryder, Chris Martin and Brendan McCullum are all legitimately of international quality as well. They don’t look like they are playing as well as they ought to however. I use the word ‘imprecise’ because they seem to be sharp enough, just missing slightly.

On the first day they won the toss and batted first in conditions that were not ideal for batting, but neither were they unduly tricky. They are conditions with which opening batsmen ought to be familiar, it is their job to see them off after all, but they played foolishly. Both of their openers threw their wickets away playing rash shots away from the body. Whilst there are times in which such shots are acceptable, the first morning of a Test match is certainly not amongst them. All of New Zealand’s top order except Williamson got themselves out in the same way, all of them needlessly. There were some demons in the pitch, yes, but the fact that Brownlie made 77 not out shows that it was not a minefield. The Australian attack is inexperienced and sensible batting would have brought rewards, but they collectively lost their heads.

Their shortcomings are also visible in the field, albeit not as spectacularly. They have had a couple of excellent chances to put a fragile Australian batting order under pressure, but they have let the opportunities slip away. Their bowling has been just a bit too erratic. Ponting in particular looked very shaky early on in his innings, but New Zealand could not get the ball and the fieldsmen in the right places to take advantage. At other times they have dropped catches, including a fairly straightforward one off Clarke when a wicket would have put them almost on level terms. It went begging and now the match is starting to slip away.

The dropped catches aside, New Zealand’s errors appear to be more mental than physical, the rushes of blood leading to collapses especially. It might be tempting for them to say that even good sides sometimes suffer collapses and even good sides sometimes fail to convert pressure with the ball into wickets and even good sides sometimes drop catches and all that would be true. But the best sides are the sides that do so rarely. New Zealand are doing so for the second Test in a row after almost losing to Zimbabwe. It is something at which their coach must work. They aren’t going to become world beaters with the talent they have, but the talent they have ought to do better than what we are seeing.

Aus v NZ preview

On paper this ought to be a one sided series. New Zealand have played varying degrees of poor cricket for years now and barely beat Zimbabwe. Meantime Australia are historically a pretty strong side. The recent contests haven’t been worth watching; New Zealand haven’t won a Test in Oz in 26 years. The fact that it may be any sort of a contest this year is a mark both of how far the Aussies have fallen and the extent to which injuries have taken their toll.

A lot of the build up to this series has focused on the Australian injury crisis, with five players pulling out before the first Test. The speculation about the replacements was curtailed, however, when the selectors named a squad of only 12. Peter Siddle was named leader of the attack, though since he is the only one of the pacemen to have ever played in a Test match he was rather the obvious choice. Nathan Lyon will probably also play (though Clarke said that if the wicket looked juicy he would be willing to play four quicks) meaning that one of James Pattinson, Mitchell Starc or Ben Cutting will probably be carrying the drinks at the Gabba. It will also mean that Chris Martin will have twice as many career wickets as the entire Australian attack combined.

There are still question marks about Australia’s batting as well. In the absence of Shane Watson, David Warner will open with Phil Hughes. Warner is in form, but unproven in first class cricket and Hughes is a bit rubbish. The middle order of Clarke, Ponting, Khawaja and Hussey is also a bit suspect. Ponting managed to get some runs against SA and now he’ll have a pretty weak Kiwi attack against which he can boost his credentials for the series against a pretty weak Indian attack. Clarke scored an incredible 151 in his first innings against South Africa and then managed just 15 for the rest of the series. He struggled in the Ashes last year as well, so it’s hard to be sure how he will do. Khawaja is still yet to really get going internationally, but he did score important runs against South Africa. Hussey looks like the weakest link of the chain. He was under considerable pressure before the last Ashes and responded by scoring buckets of runs in the first three Tests (and very few in the next two). With the dearth of Test cricket played by Australia since then he hasn’t had many more questions asked about his place in the side, but he scored just 60 runs against South Africa with a top score of 39. Combined with the last two Ashes Tests, his last eight innings against high quality bowling have yielded just 113 runs. Admittedly he won’t be up against strong bowling during the Australian summer (NZ and India) but it must still be a worry for the Australian selectors. If he doesn’t excel against the Kiwis I think they ought to look very hard at him being the one to miss out when Watson returns from injury.

New Zealand look like they will play a very similar side to the one that scraped to victory in Zimbabwe. Jesse Ryder and Tim Southee will almost certainly come into the side and both are probably good additions. Ryder certainly is, he is a very powerful batsman. Southee is in for Jeetan Patel and is good in that he is a seamer replacing an unneeded second spinner, though he isn’t necessarily a better bowler. The Kiwis still don’t have a lot in the way of batting however; Ryder and the captain Ross Taylor are the only two who average over 40. Their only world class bowler is Vettori, though a case could also be made for Chris Martin. Bracewell looks a decent talent, but has only played against Zimbabwe. Southee is essentially a county bowler.

Australia are weak and have serious questions about most of their squad, but those questions are unlikely to be asked by New Zealand. For the Kiwis to make the series close they will need virtually all of their players to step up. Their batsman in particular need to put pressure on the inexperienced Australian attack. The Australian batsmen have the motivation of knowing that one of them will be dropped when Watson returns and should not have undue difficulty facing the Kiwi attack, though it will be interesting to see how Bracewell fares. If the Gabba track is as flat as it was last year I think the first Test will be drawn, though I doubt either side will score 517-1. I think some life in the pitch will help Australia more than New Zealand though. The last thing the Aussies want is for their debutant bowlers to toil for hours on a flat surface and return 0-100. With a bit of encouragement from the wicket they could put some real pressure on a fairly brittle Kiwi batting order. Ultimately I think there will be enough in the pitch and the Kiwis will be sufficiently ill-disciplined that Australia will win both Tests.

Heartbreak

Not for me, mind, for Zimbabwe. My prediction of a heavy New Zealand victory looked good after the Kiwis took a big first innings lead. Vettori took five and Zimbabwe were bowled out for only 313. From a strong position, however, the Kiwis collapsed to 36-3 in their first innings and eventually declared on 252-8. I expect they will have wanted to lose fewer wickets, but it still set Zimbabwe a 366 to win, which looked like too much. New Zealand looked on top at stumps on day four, with Zimbabwe 61-2.

Zimbabwe played very well on the final day, however and needed just 101 more to win when the fourth wicket fell. That wicket was Taylor, however, who had scored 117 and put on over 100 with Taibu. Taibu, however, could not carry on to give his side a win. He got to 63, but with Vettori turning the ball out of the rough Taibu played a rash sweep and miscued it straight to midwicket. It was not the best of shots, and it put New Zealand on top. Zimbabwe fought and fought though. Ncube came in up the order (he batted at eleven in the first innings) and hit Vettori for a big six over midwicket. Zimbabwe just couldn’t quite do enough, however, and the superiority of the Kiwi bowlers finally started to tell and the rest of the tail collapsed. Zimbabwe were bowled out for 331 and lost by 34 runs.

Despite the loss, however, Zimbabwe should take heart from their performance. It’s never easy to get more than 300 in the fourth innings of a match, especially against a spinner of the quality of Vettori. New Zealand are certainly a better side on paper. They ought to have won, especially after taking a first innings lead of over 100 runs. The fact that Zimbabwe lost after being briefly 265-3 will be heartbreaking.

New Zealand, similarly, will have some worries after this match. They’re still a reasonably good ODI side, but the Test side have been slipping badly recently. They very seldom play Test matches anymore and they look a bit out of practise. They have two Test against Australia in December and they will definitely need to improve. They looked a bit flat on the last day when they were pushing for victory and I suspect part of that was due to not having played five days in quite some time. New Zealand is not a major cricketing nation, but they need to find a way to play decent Test cricket to maintain development for the future.