Bloody Black Caps just came up short, and so the Poms have squeaked into the finals. Bugger!Fleming got his hundred, but in such slow time he put pressure on all the other batsmen. And I hope poor Ross Taylor is telling him so.
Pictured left is Paul Collingwood, who is (or should be) the Man of the Match. Certainly no one in the NZ team gave him any competition for the title.
UPDATE: Cactus agrees:
A disgraceful day in New Zealand Cricket... The difference between the competitive Australian sporting psyche and the New Zealand one will be shown here. An Australian batsman who batted the way Fleming did despite the hundred would be publicly lambasted as selfish and dropped for the next match. In New Zealand everyone will be glad Fleming's finally back in form.Fuck 'im. He lost us the game.
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6 comments:
Oy! Don't ~just~ blame Flemming! Blame the stupid sods who shelled those catches!
Collingwood dropped on 17 for instance...
What the hell is Bracewell doing? He should be giving them 1-2 hours of fielding drills a day! Catching should be automatic to guys in international cricket.
Then there are the bowlers! What's with this 3 wides and 3 no balls Bullshit? We gave them 51 overs worth of 'friggin bowling.
Now let's remember how we got into this bloody mess in the first place! We let England beat us twice! ENGLAND! TWICE!
Put the blame where it's due Peter!
"What's with this 3 wides and 3 no balls Bullshit?"
The Poms bowled 15 wides (most of them in that atrocious first over), so don't be harsh on the black caps on that front.
The Black Cap fielding in this series has been abysmal, especially for a team like the Black Caps who, until recently, were rightly labeled as one of the three teams (the other two being Australia and South Africa of course) that set the example, the standard, on how to field. They used to be one of the best fielding sides around. Now they can't hold simple catches.
This summer has been a bad summer so far. We had a test series draw against Zimbabwe, a 20-20 series draw against Zimbabwe, a one day series draw against Zimbabwe, and now 2 out of eight in the tri-series. That makes a meger 4 wins out of 12 completed ODIs (one of the Zimbabwe games got rained out, which with the Black Caps form may of been a good thing).
And what do they have next? Three more games against Australia in the Chappel/Haddely series. I can't see them winning even one game in that series.
They have the West Indies after that don't they? I can't see them doing well there either, unless Brian Lara has a bad day. The West Indies tend to lose if that happens.
Depending on the pool draw they may make the Super Six in the World Cup again (if they are lucky enough to get some of the worse teams) but even that is pushing it. They certainly won't make it further.
The will do poorly in all three unless they drastically improve their fielding efforts.
Noizy,
Franklin & Mason are medium pacers. They were responsible for all of those no balls. There is no excuse for that. He shouldn't overstep at their pace.
As for wides, these are international bowlers. They should be able to put it on a penny 99% of the time. The only excuse for giving up a wide is if you are attempting to induce the ball to swing and it doesn't.
And giving fewer wides than England isn't an excuse. England aren't going to be in the World Cup Final. Australia are. And if we EVER want to beat them regularly (rather than once in a blue moon), we meet and exceed Australia's standards - not England's.
Robert, sadly even Vettori bowled a few no balls, which is inexcusable for a spin bowler given their short run up. it is worse for him to do it than for Franklin and Mason to do it.
Bracewell should teach his bowlers to land so that only their toes, if that, land over the line. Then no balls would be an issue in one ball in one hundred if that.
The batting has been good in the last four games. Sadly the fielding and bowling hasn't been abysmal.
Usually it is the other way around with the Black Caps. Usually the fielding is world class, top notch and the bowling good or at least decent, especially from Vettori and Bond, and the batting lets them down, leaving too much for the tale enders to do.
The Black Caps are deservedly low in the test and ODI rankings. If they took a leaf out of the Australian book (without copycatting that is, after all they can only win by using their own style, not copycatting) they would do a hell of a lot better.
NZ were ranked 2nd in ODIs a few years back, but clearly that was an aberration.
Given we were gifted 25 or so runs in the opening 3 overs, we had no excuse to lose. Rot set in about 25 overs when the run rate got over 6po but actually began much earlier. We had very few big overs (over 10rpo) at the end and a lot of low scoring ones in the middle period, which shows we weren't pressuring the field for singles and our big hitters did not come off. We started fast and finished slow which is not the way to play.
The fielding didn't lose it for us as the English were just as bad. I think the reasons were that we lost it mentally when we were unable to up or maintain the tempo in the mid innings. It sounded like we cracked under the pressure, whereas we were far more competitive and free hitting in the games we expected to lose against Aus.
Some stats are here http://content-eap.cricinfo.com/cbs/engine/current/match/249239.html?view=comparison
PS some of you must have been watching a different game. Mason didn't play
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