To win a test match, you have to bowl the opposition out twice.
To win a test match, you have to bowl the opposition out twice. That seems to be NZ’s greatest obstacle.
As resourceful as sportspeople are at detecting positives in a panorama of negatives, I suspect the best the Black Caps came up with when analysing their drubbing in India was that their next test match in that part of the world is two years away.
And although they were crushed, at least they were crushed by the No 1-ranked test team. Australia fared no better in their recent series in Sri Lanka despite being ranked several notches above their hosts.
On a personal note, I had the consolation of not being made to look a fool. Beforehand ( Sport, October 1), I suggested India’s off-spinning allrounder Ravichandran Ashwin might well be the best player you’ve never heard of, if not the best player in the world. Ashwin lived up to this billing, taking 27 wickets at an average of 17.7 and being named player of the series.
Ashwin, 30, has been player of the series in seven of the eight test series India have won since he made his debut in 2011. To put this in perspective: he’s played 39 tests; his compatriot Sachin Tendulkar, regarded by many as the greatest player of his generation, won five man of the series awards during his 200-test career.
A statistical analysis on the ESPN Cricinfo website confirms Ashwin is up there with the most influential cricketers to have played the game. For instance, of all bowlers who’ve taken more than 100 wickets in test-match victories, Ashwin has the fifth-highest percentage of wickets taken by his team. In the 21 test wins in which he’s participated, Ashwin has taken 36% of
India’s wickets.
Two of the four bowlers with a higher percentage than Ashwin are New Zealanders – the others being Sydney Barnes, who played for England between 1901 and 1914, and the prolific Sri Lankan Muttiah Muralitharan. One of the Kiwis is, of course, our greatest bowler, Richard Hadlee. The other is leg spinner Clarrie Grimmett, who was born in Dunedin and made his first-class debut, aged 17, for Wellington.
Because New Zealand wasn’t a test-playing nation, Grimmett moved to Australia in his early twenties. He played 37 tests between 1925 and 1936 and is one of only four bowlers to take 100 test wickets having made their international debut aged over 30.
Bill O’Reilly – the great Australian leg spinner, not the
Fox News blowhard – reckoned Grimmett, who was born on Christmas Day, was “the best Christmas present Australia ever received” from across the Tasman. Hadlee’s presence on the list reinforces how crucial he was to our most successful era in test cricket and explains why we are struggling now. To win a test match, you have to bowl the opposition out
twice (barring a spectacularly ill-judged declaration). When Hadlee spearheaded the bowling attack, we did that most of the time; now we don’t.
In the past 12 months, the Black Caps have won test series against
Sri Lanka at home and impostors Zimbabwe away, and lost to Australia home and away, South Africa and
Hadlee was crucial to our most successful era in test cricket and explains why we are struggling now.
India. In only one game in those four losing series did the Black Caps manage to bowl the opposition out twice – at Eden Gardens, Kolkata. In fact, they were able to bowl the other team out only seven times in 18 innings, twice conceding 500-plus runs in the process.
That, in a nutshell, explains why the Black Caps are better in the short forms of the game. In limited-overs cricket, you don’t have to bowl the opposition out; you just have to score more runs in your allotted overs than they do in theirs.