Out-of-form Guptill faces chop for England series
TO SEE Martin Guptill bat in test matches for New Zealand over the past six months has been to watch a metaphor of the fortunes of New Zealand Cricket play out.
Guptill, a batsman of, at-times, true elegance and potential, has looked all at sea at the crease. Low on confidence, he has played the way he has in shorter-forms of the game – pushing hard at balls that should be left to go through to the keeper’s hands.
Edges have been common. Five of his last 12 dismissals have come from catches behind the stumps.
His test batting average has sunk from 34.78 to 30.60 in just six tests.
Like the national team at large, South Africa has proved the nadir for Guptill in the test game.
Despite scoring a gritty 48 in his last test innings in Port Elizabeth, the 26- year- old contributed just two runs to the Kiwi cause in his other three knocks in the Republic.
It’s a slump that cricket commentator and Sunday News columnist Simon Doull believes should see him lose his spot from the test team for the upcoming threematch series at home against England in March.
A shift down the work, Doull said.
Put in someone like promising youngsters Hamish Rutherford or Jeet Raval to face the English instead.
‘‘There’s people saying Guptill should move down the order – well, he’s an opening batsman and that’s what he wants to do,’’ he said.
‘‘You don’t give him the easy out by saying he can bat at five or six and you can drop someone out.
‘‘ I don’t see demoting Martin Guptill from one or two, to five or six, is a good option.’’
Guptill’s strength has
order
won’t
always been in the shorter form of the game. In one-day internationals, he boasts a healthy average of 37.73.
Playing for the Black Caps in Twenty20s, he hits a 33.93 runaverage, at an impressive strike rate of 123.99.
Yet Guptill has proved he is committed to the longer form of the game. The Aucklander spent the early part of last winter playing county cricket for Derbyshire in England, forgoing lucrative money in the Indian Premier League to do so.
Former Black Caps coach David Trist thinks it’s the game he tried to separate himself from then, that is affecting his test game now.
‘‘ He gets too upright at the crease,’’ Trist, the national coach between 1999 and 2001, said.
‘‘That’s very suitable for when you play Twenty20 cricket. You’ve got to be upright and you’ve got to be quite hard-handed.
‘‘You go at it, and it’s ideal for Twenty20. Obviously with test cricket you have to play with softer hands, and you play much later.
‘‘When you talk about playing later, you talk about playing under the eyes, rather than in front. You wait for it to come to you rather than going towards it. To go into test cricket after [Twenty20 cricket] and completely re-invent how they go . . . the transition is difficult.
‘‘It’s much harder to get back to the longer form, than it is to the shorter form.’’
Guptill will likely play in all three of the Black Caps one- dayers against South Africa, starting last night in Paarl.
Opportunities to focus on the longer form will be limited before the No 2-ranked test team England arrive next month.
Like New Zealand Cricket, Guptill needs to work on the fundamentals as soon as he can.
He needs to re- focus on the things that gave him the opportunities to play international cricket in the first place.
Once that happens, the road ahead in the whites will be much clearer for the embattled opener.