Tagged with: Stat Attack
People who don’t like Test cricket will often say things like: how can you play for five full days and still end up with a draw? The answer to that is because sometimes, very rarely, perhaps only once in a lifetime, you might end up with a finish such as that
It’s easy to lump praise upon the greatness of Trent Boult. With more than 300 Test wickets to his name – and counting – at an average under 28s, and a stack of fabled swing bowling masterclasses amongst his highlights, the numbers and the memories each speak for themselves
There was truly nobody else out there like Shane Warne. Not even just in cricketing spaces, there was nobody else like him fullstop. In any capacity. The bloke was one outta one, a genuinely unique character.
Ten wickets in a single innings will do some wild things to your stats. Almost a third of Ajaz Patel’s current Test wicket tally was taken in his eleventh match: the (heavy) loss to India at Mumbai, the city of his birth. The West Auckland Prince of Mumbai with 14 wickets in that one.
BJ Watling is a stats man. Whether he himself cares about the numbers all that much, dunno, but he’s one of those players whose excellence is right there for all to see on his Cricinfo profile.
The demands on the modern cricketer are pretty hefty. Bouncing around the world from team to team, from format to format, from domestic to international, from red ball to white ball. Expected to smoothly transition between all of them and perform at a high level throughout.
It’s been a long time without Blackcaps cricket. The lockdowns brought a premature end to a cheeky limited overs series in Australia back in March and half a year later there’s been nothing since.
Kane Williamson is going to break all of New Zealand’s relevant batting records. If only you had a dollar for every time you heard somebody say that, right? From the most knowledgeable of commentators and pundits to Jerry down at the pub, Kane Williamson’s greatness is non-negotiable at this point.
Rightio then friends. We’ve looked at the disparity between spin and seam in New Zealand conditions and it’s equal and opposite disparity in foreign conditions. We’ve also looked deeper into the general bastard of a time that spinners have had in Aotearoa lately.
Shane Warne’s numbers here are so immense that there is actually only one New Zealand spinner with more wickets within these shores than him: Daniel Vettori. Dipak Patel does tie Warney with 49 wickets but at an average that’s nearly double what ol’ flipper king managed.
The thing about Test cricket is that it’s a lot easier to win games at home than it is away. Sorta goes without saying, really.
Yuck. That’s disgusting. This kind of filth needs a parental warning or something. But then we knew these statties weren’t gonna be up to much because we watched those games, we lived the humiliation.
Neil Wagner. What a champion that man is. Probably the only kiwi bowler to come out of this series with their reputation enhanced (other than Jeet Raval), although Tim Southee deserves more credit than he’s probably gotten. Aaaaaaand that’s about where we run out of happy things say.
Oh what beautiful numbers. What wonders to behold. Five different players scored tons in three Blackcaps innings and of that immense top seven, all but one with averages above 40, five of them improved on those averages in this series.
Latham might be a very useful wicket-keeper/batsman on the ODI scene but chuck him in the Test stuff and he’s a world class opening bat. And just in case you didn’t already know that, he confirmed it with a top notch 154 in the second Test, helping to set up an innings victory.
We’ve already taken a peek at the bowlers so it only makes sense that the beautiful batsmen would get their turn in the sunlight. Four years of fours and sixes and run outs and raised bats.
There’s a lot of water goes under the bridge over a four-year World Cup cycle. Four years ago Mike Hesson and Brendon McCullum were only just getting used to their new roles as national heroes and a passionate public had only just forgotten the initial struggles of that leadership combo.
2018 was a brilliant year for the Blackcaps in Test cricket. Three series all won. Seven matches with only one defeat (four wins and two draws). All super competitive series which required crucial contributions from all number of players, from established batting veterans to previously uncapped spinners.
For the first two Test matches over in the UAE, Tim Southee had his feet up in the stands with a good book or perhaps a cup of tea as the brains trust of the Blackcaps decided he was the odd man out in a seam attack that needed to be shrunk to accommodate an extra spinner for the conditions.
It’s nice when you achieve something that hasn’t been done for a long time. 49 years since the New Zealand cricket team last won a series away to Pakistan. This one was in the UAE but close enough.