New Zealand has seen the destructive power of India with the bat, and they are scared.
Green and Low? Sportsfreak talks about the sort of wickets the kiwis are brought up on.
Much debate over the last few days as to whether New Zealand should pull the 2002 card out from under the bottom of the pack, and produce pitches that are going to favour the home side, or at very least make it a lottery.
Today, we put forwards the case for doctoring.
The kind of doctoring
We are not talking about a traditional WACA or Sabina Park green-top here.
Someone might die, and that is hardly playing into the hands of a seam attack with an average pace of around 130kph.
What we are talking about is the kind of pitch offered up for the 1992 World Cup.
Plenty of weird and wonderful random sideways movement, minimal bounce, and even less pace. Just like we got at Eden Park on Saturday.
Will flat tracks work?
No they won’t.
India showed during the ODI series that this New Zealand attack poses no threats on batting friendly pitches.
It wasn’t just Sehwag either. All of them, including the 4 who played in domestic cricket (making about 8 of them) showed that these TV-friendly new age NZ pitches with their lack of sideways movement and perfect bounce are just like a favourite IPL pitch.
Vettori offers his subtleties to add some variation, but the rest of the “attack” picked for Hamilton need help badly.
Mind Games
Most of the Indian top order were here last time. As soon as a ball jags a bit those demons and memories will start coming back. Seaming tracks are at their most dangerous when you’re scared of them.
Brent Arnel
Why pick him if you’re not going to water the pitch?
Short tests are fun
Lets face it, the 2002 Indian series was memorable. Too much test cricket these days is played on batting friendly roads that provides a tedious mismatch between bat and ball.
The recent West Indies v England series had a couple of tense finishes, but in between that there was a lot of tedium of Strauss and Chanderpaul nudging their way to hig scores.
But England getting bowled out for 51 was fun. Really fun.
Ishant Sharma
Adam’s Apple’s hype is based around 2 things. The counterbalance of throat and mullet, and the serious working over of the then world’s best batsman at Perth last year.
That Perth pitch was one of the great ones. Fast, bouncy, and pretty true. But Sharma was able to extract every bit of venom out of it, and use his class and height to utilise a very good pitch.
Why would we want to let him do that again?
Keep it low and slow and he’s taken out of the match.
We might also get to see some more of last Saturday’s theatrics.
Daniel Flynn
Flynn is gutsy and has a pretty good technique. But we have seen that when it gets up from a length he tends to eat it.
Put him in on a slow seamer and he’s got the technique when rocking onto the front foot to know when to leave, and when to play.
He is better placed to handle this than most out there.
Jacob Oram
It is hard to know what might one day motivate Oram to play test cricket again. But the sight of the ball doing strange things when bowled gently might be the one thing that could do it.
Iain O’Brien’s Blog
We’re sick of all those Indian schoolkids gloating over there.
Because we can
Call it regaining some sovereignty.
Next: A much shorter analysis of why we shouldn’t.
Visit Sportsfreak; they pull out of less tests than Jacob Oram.
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