No Test cricket commentaries...hold your horses

One of the first items on New Zealand Cricket's board meeting agenda when it next meets should be a revisiting of their radio rights issue.

Just before the coronavirus shutdown took place, NZC learned that they would not be able to sell their radio rights to NZME, the owner of Radio Sport. That effectively meant the end of ball-by-ball Test cricket broadcasting over the radio waves.

NZME said it couldn't afford to pay what NZC was asking so that was that with no other players in the market – at least so far as the general public were aware.

Disappointment for cricket fans around the nation loomed – no more Test cricket broadcasts.

But in stepped Mother Nature.

Covid-19 shut New Zealand down and many other places in the world too – for how long no one knows.

One thing is certain, however, the borders are going to remain closed for a longer period than the shutdown occurring in New Zealand at the moment.

Different countries around the world are treating the virus in different ways with varying results. Their recovery times will all be different thus affecting international movement.

Whatever the right method of dealing with the issue, it is certain that the lingering impact of the pandemic is going to be a transformed approach to future travel.

That has significant consequences for sport as we knew it pre-coronavirus.

While nothing can be sure, it does appear that New Zealand's sportspeople are going to have to play in their own backyard, probably at least until midway through next year, or until a vaccine can be found, manufactured in the quantities necessary and distributed all over the world.

So from just that perspective, cricket, rugby, netball, league, you name it they are all in the same boat, are going to have to organise competition from within.

That will be long overdue among critics who felt the professional era had provided a disconnect with grassroots levels of sport in New Zealand.

In cricket's case, that meant a devaluation of their domestic cricket programme while those fortunate enough to be able to travel the globe selling themselves off to whatever T20 league was offering an incentive, put themselves ahead of the best interests of the New Zealand game.

Suddenly, the New Zealand game has stepped into the picture in a much more meaningful place and the chance to play cricket should mean those who are able to afford their time will be expected to play in domestic cricket.

With no internationals, in Tests, ODIs or T20 formats, the only cricket is going to be for the Plunket Shield in first-class games, and in domestic reduced overs formats.

Given the likely public appetite for sports events, could the consequence of localised sport be a return to radio and, possibly even, television coverage of games?

That would be a huge boost for cricket and a guaranteed level of income for those running the game at the top level.

Undoubtedly, such a structure would involve more commercial reality coming into consideration to suit all who would be involved.

Variations on a theme could also apply to rugby, netball, league and other sports whether team-oriented or individual sports.

It could be sports own version of Back to the Future.

Another New Zealand case of what might have been

Brendon McCullum Declared, with Greg McGee. Published by Mower Publications.

Brendon McCullum achieved, for a New Zealander, a significant place in cricket.

Just how that will be remembered, time will tell. There's no doubt he had an impact on the game with his blistering batting when on song. He retired with a dossier full of statistical credits.

Second highest run scorer in New Zealand's Test cricket with 6453, behind Stephen Fleming's 7172.

The highest score by a New Zealand batsman in Tests, 302, and the fastest century by any player in the world off 54 balls, and he has the three fastest Test centuries by a New Zealander.

He achieved the world record for most sixes hit in Test cricket with 107.

Second on the list of New Zealand wicketkeepers' dismissals with 179, behind Adam Parore on 201 – a feat that would have been significantly improved had it not been for back issues that forced him to give up 'keeping.

He was third on the list of Test appearances with 101, behind Daniel Vettori on 113 and Stephen Fleming on 111 and third also on the list of ODI appearances (260) and ODI runs (6083).

He captained NZ in 31 Tests, won 11, lost 11, drew nine, averaged 45.28 as captain, 38.64 as not and he captained NZ in 62 ODIs, won 36, lost 22.

There are many other credits in his career, including that memorable knock to launch the IPL cricket phenomenon that elevated his personal wealth quite significantly.

He led the New Zealand side in a distinctive fashion, not always with the support of the entire cricket community, but definitely in how he felt the game should be played. It was a policy that won praise from those who had wondered at cricket's direction on the field, even if it didn't quite deliver as many wins as it might.

The fact he was in the position to impose that style of play came after a harrowing transfer of power that is the subject of a thorough scrutiny in his autobiography, rightfully pointing out that it wasn't of his making. The manner in which the whole affair was conducted was yet another indictment of the way New Zealand Cricket too often operates. A world where smoke and mirrors come to mind.

Similarly, the manner in which the International Cricket Council handled the anti-corruption episode involving McCullum whose evidence against former team-mate, and hero, Chris Cairns was leaked to an English newspaper.

This treatment made a mockery of the entire anti-corruption system and would have been laughable were the subject matter not so serious. There are times when international sports administrators demonstrate an ineptness that defies belief, and this was one of them.

Either you take corruption in the game seriously or you shouldn't bother. This instance was not a good demonstration of intent. It ranked with the IOC's miserable failure to deal with the Russian drugs issue ahead of the Rio Olympic Games – a complete and utter indictment of the IOC system.

If there was one element to his game that McCullum inevitably shared with many of his New Zealand contemporaries it was the 'what might have been' factor.

Specifically, this related to summation of events by the belief that the action was reasonable because that was how he played the game. That's fine to a point but there comes a time in any sport, in any contest, when the relevance of the now, the key moment, the turning point in a game, occurs.

That is when the cleverness, the nous, the understanding, the difference between winning and losing occurs. That is when greatness is demonstrated.

History will show, as it has with several other top New Zealand cricketers, that greatness eluded McCullum. Too often opportunities to win were lost because to have pulled back a little, to have made a subtle change of course, would have meant departing from a basic, but sometimes flawed, philosophy.

Cricket is a game of many lessons. In it, there is nothing new under the sun. McCullum may never have heard of former Australian captain and opener, and television commentator, Bill Lawry's adage, "You play 110 percent to win and you play 150 percent not to lose." Even if the concept is mathematically impossible, the message is clear.

If he had applied it, there might have been an even rosier hue to his final career record.

No more obvious example exists than what was seen in the 2015 World Cup final. New Zealand had performed brilliantly in securing their first final place. The cricket world was their oyster.

But at a time when instinct over-ruled pragmatism, McCullum succumbed. Batting first, the opportunity was there to unsettle the Australians, to knock them off their game, to make them wonder what New Zealand had up their sleeve?

History had its own example of that 'something different' when Martin Crowe and Warren Lees achieved that back in the 1992 World Cup by unleashing Dipak Patel as an opening bowler with his off-spin as the prelude to a sensational win.

Instead of leaving the Aussies to scratch their heads and wonder where things were going, New Zealand blew it when McCullum rolled the dice unnecessarily early and departed in the first over – opportunity lost. That was the way he played the game – and while he might feel there were no regrets, that won't be a feeling shared by a cricketing public who had waited 39 years for New Zealand to win a Cricket World Cup.

New Zealand fans, many of whom were new to the game and the success of the men capped in black, hoped this might be the time. But it was a case of situation normal, another setback of the variety to which New Zealand cricket fans have been inured over the years. Cleverness, of the opportunistic type, is something other countries do better.

'Brendon McCullum Declared' leaves no doubt about McCullum's approach to his career. It is a fascinating insight into performance in top-level sport and is crafted in a manner expected of such a fine writer as Greg McGee but it also serves as yet another reminder of 'what might have been'.

Bodyline - What it was all about

Sports Classics Review No. 1

Possibly given what New Zealand's batsmen are going to face in the second Test in Perth it is worth looking at the fast bowling phenomenon that was 'Bodyline'.

Missing until recently from my cricket library was a copy of David Frith's Bodyline Autopsy that is surely the definitive book on the controversy that threatened relations between Australia and England in the summer of 1932-33.

What gives Frith's treatment an advantage is the benefit of time. One of the finest books by one of the participants was undoubtedly Jack Fingleton's Cricket Crisis. It had some distance between the events of those days and publication, but Frith has been able to draw on a much more extensive resource base to weave his story.

His account is largely chronological but it has a context that makes it a fascinating look into the events.

Bodyline was the method of bowling deemed appropriate to deal with the scourge of all bowlers of the era, Don Bradman.

The villain of the piece, England's captain for the Ashes tour to Australia, Douglas Jardine had exclaimed while watching film of the 1930 Ashes Test at The Oval where Bradman struggled with a damp pitch, "I've got it! He's yellow!" And he wasn't referring to the one-day uniform so common in the modern day.

He believed Bradman was afraid. Hence the development of the leg-theory that would be labelled 'Bodyline', the result of a newspaper reference by former Australian batsman and AFL footballer John Worrall to Bill Voce's 'half-pitched slingers on the body line'.

Jardine developed an armoury capable of meeting his tactical requirement, the Nottinghamshire bowlers Harold Larwood and Bill Voce, backed by the slower but accurate Bill Bowes.

Bradman said from Canada, where he was touring, when the England team was named that an 'avalanche of bumpers' would be on the menu for the Australian batsmen. What he didn't foresee was the packed leg-side field to cope with the chances that would come their way.

Jardine hadn't played in the 1930 Test where Bradman was seen to be troubled, but he soon found out about it and had a meeting with Larwood, Voce and their Nottinghamshire captain A W Carr to discuss possible tactics.

Larwood later wrote that Jardine asked him if he could bowl leg stump and make the ball come into the body forcing Bradman to play to leg. Larwood said he could.

The stage was set for two supreme contenders, Bradman with the bat and Larwood with the ball, to go at it.

What followed occupies much of Frith's tale, augmented by contemporary and subsequence observations by participants and journalists. It is woven into a fine tale not confined to the pitch, but to the halls of power in both countries as diplomatic skills are required to resolve the situation.

Jardine in the end got his way and secured the Ashes, but at what cost? For whatever reason the main contenders from the England side, Jardine and Larwood played very little cricket in the future.

Hovering, sometimes in the foreground and often in the background, was one of the team's two managers Pelham Warner, whose place in the whole affair had an aspect of running with the hares and hunting with the hounds.

The postscript is almost as intriguing as the on-field action and lends a completeness to the story as Frith follows the story to the end.

Was Bodyline a success? Well England won the Ashes for the short-term success but in the longer term it would have to be said that Australia's fury at the tactic made life easier for their players. And Bradman still finished second in the averages for both teams at 56.57 while his strike rate of 74.85 was still superior to all the other recognised batsmen in the series.

What is a success is Frith's treatment and a book worthy of a place in any sports library.

Peter Petherick, a long wait made worthwhile

Peter Petherick's death in Perth this week brought to mind the realisation that the prospect of late developers getting an opportunity in cricket are more likely the exception rather than the rule in the modern era.

Petherick, an off-spinner, who took a hat-trick on his Test debut – one of only three players to achieve the feat, had a long wait before being called out of Central Otago, at the age of 33, for the first-class summer of 1974-75.

He took 42 wickets, in a stunning debut season, and was selected for New Zealand's tour of Pakistan and India in 1976.

In an interview with Petherick, who had by that stage moved to Paraparaumu, for Wellington's Evening Post he told me he had never given up hope of playing first-class cricket.

"I was just waiting. Jack and Gren Alabaster were dominating things down south. But I was always keen to play first-class cricket because you don't know your limitations until you play at that level.

"It's the same when you move up to Test level," he said.

Not that the transition to first-class play from the Hawke Cup cricket he had been playing was any jaunt.

Petherick was so concerned two weeks before his first match, against Canterbury, that he rang Glenn Turner for some advice. Turner invited him down to his Dunedin home to stay until the game.

"I knew I could do well because I could turn the ball. But Glenn got me to move my line over from off stump to middle and leg. I took three of the four wickets to fall in Otago's first game before rain set in and I was right," he said.

Then making his Test debut in Lahore he found himself wicketless for 96 runs and wishing he was away back home in Central Otago.

The only comfort to him was that he was getting slaughtered just like all the New Zealand bowlers.

"That's the thing over there. You can bowl a lot of maidens but then you can concede a lot of 12-run overs," he said.

But just when things looked darkest, a spot of light shone on his misery.

"Javed Miandad and Asif Iqbal had recovered the Pakistan innings but then just before tea, Javed tried to put a ball over the fence and got only a top edge to Richard Hadlee standing by the square leg umpire."

Petherick had a notable first wicket in Test matches.

"Wasim Raja was next in and came down the wicket. I was bowling around the wicket to him and he hit it straight back to me for the caught-and-bowled.

"Intikhab Alam came in and I never even thought about the hat-trick. The players were crowding the bat.

"As I went back to my mark I thought to myself, 'If I was Intikhab Alam I would come down the wicket' and so I darted one in to him. He got a glove or a hand to it and Geoff Howarth made a great catch.

"Everyone appealed and as I turned around to the umpire he was unmoved.

"I thought he wasn't going to give it, but then his finger went up.

"However, it was only after Intikhab had walked that he did it," he said.

Rajah and Intikhab had not been named in the side originally and when they were dismissed the crowd went crazy because one of their players had been left out of the side.

Petherick had his own version of umpiring abilities in Pakistan and they weren't related to the reluctance of the umpire to give a decision on his hat-trick ball.

"At one stage I was batting with Andy Roberts and I was out three times, but not given. Then when I was given out, it wasn't out.

"The umpires were not cheats, they were quite nice people and were under a hell of a lot of pressure, they were just incompetent."

Petherick played six Tests for New Zealand, taking 16 wickets at 42.81. In first-class play of 52 matches he took 189 wickets at 24.47 with a best performance of 9-93.

McCullum has chance to blaze another trail

Brendan McCullum's success in overcoming all the exterior stress in leading his side to one of the more definite New Zealand Test cricket successes in Sharjah on Sunday may not be the end of his rewards this year.

 

It was New Zealand's 78^th Test victory, and its eighth Test win over Pakistan.

Completing the fourth double century of his career en route to 202, McCullum moved closer in second place behind Stephen Fleming on the all-time New Zealand Test run scoring list with 5653 runs, 1519 runs behind while he also gained a share of the New Zealand second wicket partnership record  of 297 runs with Kane Williamson thus supplanting John Wright and Andrew Jones 241 against England in 1991-92.

However, McCullum broke one of the longer standing New Zealand batting records during his innings.

McCullum lifted his total of runs scoring in the calendar year to 969, the most by a New Zealander.

John R Reid lost the grip he had held on that statistic since 1965 when McCullum reached 872 runs, as he posted his 105^th run during his innings.

That was a significant achievement and leaves McCullum with the chance, in the first Test against Sri Lanka in Christchurch starting on Boxing Day, to become the first New Zealander to achieve 1000 Test runs in a calendar year.

Reid's was a significant record to break given he played in an era of reduced Test match opportunities, and the occasion was helped in 1965 by New Zealand playing a home series against Pakistan before setting out to tour India, Pakistan and England, one of the busiest years in their Test history to that point.

However, the mark has been under an assault in recent times with Ross Taylor, who got within six runs of beating the record last year having four of the greatest annual accumulation of runs among the top seven occasions.

Martin Crowe also got close with 820 runs during his great year of 1985, part of which included New Zealand's innings victory over Australia in Brisbane.

It should be noted that Kane Williamson ended the Test on 844 runs and he too has the chance to finish the year not only passing Reid's mark, but also scoring 1000 runs.

McCullum's appetite for runs has been central to the team doing so well and finally starting its move up the ICC Test rankings while the support of Williamson and Taylor, and the emerging value of Tom Latham has given New Zealand the sort of batting stability that is vital to its continuing climb to Test match competitiveness.

To have completed such an outstanding victory in foreign conditions by out-spinning the home team speaks volumes for McCullum's side.

It should not be forgotten that it has long been an adage of the New Zealand game that if a bowler can take 10 wickets in a match, that is a significant step along the way to achieving a Test match victory.

Mark Craig's 10 for 203 was the 25^th occasion a New Zealand bowler had taken 10 wickets, and he was the 15^th bowler to achieve the feat.

Most runs by a New Zealander in a calendar year:

B McCullum		969	64.6	2014
J R Reid		871	36.39	1965
R Taylor		866	72.17	2013
M Crowe		820	51.25	1985
R Taylor		819	54.6	2012
R Taylor		818	38.95	2008
R Taylor		782	55.86	2009
B Sutcliffe		774	51.6	1954
N Astle		769	45.24	1999
B McCullum		758	75.8	2010
M Crowe		751	62.58	1987
S Fleming		737	46.06	2004
J Wright		705	78.33	1990
G Turner		676	96	1972
M Richardson		663	60.27	2001
B Congdon		641	27.87	1969
S Fleming		631	70.11	2003
S Thomson		631	39.44	1994
B Young		623	44.5	1997
M Crowe		598	46	1992
C McMillan		587	39.13	2000
K Rutherford		571	43.92	1993
S Fleming		570	47.5	2006
J Wright		566	40.43	1984
M Burgess		565	35.31	1976
G Howarth		560	56	1978
L Vincent		541	49.18	2005
A Jones		513	102.6	1991