Catch up post
Posted by Hamish McBrearty on January 23rd, 2007
As you probably might have noticed I didn’t post anything during the innings break or after the New Zealand vs Australia game on Sunday night. The reason was quite simple, I went out because I really thought New Zealand were going to get thrashed. When I left New Zealand were 4/53 and in deep trouble. I don’t think a single New Zealand supporter thought that Craig McMillan would play the way he did and help New Zealand on to a defendable total of 218.
However by all accounts poor fielding cost New Zealand the match. Without ace fast bowler Shane Bond the Kiwi attack had the Aussies in deep trouble at 17/3, but were unable to capitalise and dropped catches and missed run out opportunities saw victory slip away from the Kiwis.
Today we look forward to the battle for 2nd place resuming between the English and New Zealand. England will be without captain Michael Vaughan who is out with a torn hamstring while New Zealand’s top bowler Shane Bond appears to have made a remarkable comeback from a serious back injury. This match is an absolute must win for the Kiwis who are rapidly running out of matches in which to score points.
The experiment of playing an extra batsman against Australia appeared to fail as extra batsman Hamish Marshall was dismissed for a duck. Look for Jeetan Patel to return to the team on a turning wicket in Adelaide with Michael Mason also making room for Shane Bond. Fortunately this summer’s other experiment of Brendan McCullum opening the batting has been scrapped leaving McCullum free to hit boundaries and run quick singles towards the end of the innings.
England’s batting this summer has been very inconsistent with Andrew Flintoff often relied upon to anchor the innings. With the added pressure of captaincy on Flintoff’s shoulders today, one of the other English batsmen will need to step up and score some runs. The English bowling attack has slowly been getting better with Jon Lewis and James Anderson taking wickets and bowling well in their last outing against Australia.
I’ll be back with the teams and the toss of the coin later this afternoon.
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- Commonwealth Bank Series Thoughts
- New Zealand vs England 4 Preview
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- Australia vs New Zealand 1 Innings Break
The Catch up post by Hamish McBrearty, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
