Cricket: Why the others can't do what Vettori can

It happened again last week - a limp test match performance against Sri Lanka with face saved only by yet another piece of Daniel Vettori batting prowess; followed by a much more convincing showing at limited overs cricket. It leads us to the question, and not for the first time: Why is New Zealand so poor in test cricket? Or, put another way: Why can't the other Black Caps bat as well as Vettori? Paul Lewis investigates.

It's embarrassing. As we pointed out in these pages last week, over the past three years, skipper Daniel Vettori is the top or second-top scorer in around one out of every three tests - and that from a No 8 batsman who, by any measure, is not the most attractive nor most talented bat around. We typically see Vettori leading a fightback, face pinched with concentration, defending well and waiting for the ball to come from which he can score. He has a good eye, a small array of shots from which he can profit and is a vastly experienced cricketer with a deep well of guts and stubbornness. He averages in the 30s and 40s for his last 2000 runs in test cricket.

These are qualities this country has previously come to expect from its test cricketers. Fans were raised with few genuinely world-class players like Richard Hadlee, Glenn Turner or Martin Crowe to enjoy. Instead, many well-performed New Zealand batsmen came to the international game with solid defensive techniques and a determination not to sell their wicket cheaply; to occupy the crease, bat time, outlast and out-manoeuvre.

We're talking your Bevan Congdons, the skipper when New Zealand won its first test against Australia in the 1970s and who made a pair of centuries in successive tests against England, and a good England side at that. Congdon was a dry batsman with a droll sense of humour; who had a sound technique and a jut-jawed, they-shall-not-pass attitude. He played 61 tests and rarely, if ever, squandered his wicket.

We're talking other obstinate, gutsy fighters - usually not flashy strokemakers but compilers of runs; batsmen who built their innings with technique, patience and will. We're talking your John F Reid, Bruce Edgar, Jeremy Coney, Mark Richardson, John Wright and many more. Look at the list of test cricketers who have scored 1000 runs or more and suss out the best averages. It's full of this type of player.

Why, then, when we are watching the Black Caps batting in tests, do we have to put an involuntary hand over our faces from time to time when a batsman who isn't Vettori plays a shot that has little or no place in a test match?

It's a bit unfair to pick on Jacob Oram, as he helped Vettori fight back in the second test against Sri Lanka. But he departed in the first innings to a reverse sweep - a rank, high-risk, one-day shot that should only be played from time to time in the shortened version of the game and never in a test match.

Oram, as he left the crease, tapped himself on his helmet with his bat in self-admonition. As an expression of remorse, it was sadly lacking. This was a shot that must have turned previous New Zealand representatives crimson with embarrassment and raised the never-ending talking point - why do the Black Caps bat so poorly in tests?

Two of the men who head that list of batsmen mentioned earlier - Richardson and Reid - were asked their views. The latter has the highest average of any New Zealand batsman who has scored more than 1000 test runs; Richardson is third on the all-time list, behind Reid and Crowe.

But it was a man not on that list; someone involved with New Zealand cricket at a senior level; who spoke loudest and said what we are all thinking - that the other Black Caps do not have Vettori's respect for the game, his professionalism and his passion; and that too many things come too easy to the modern cricketer.

His anonymity is caused by the fact that the man concerned didn't want to jeopardise his position by attaching his name to heartfelt criticisms.

"Most people will point to the growth of limited overs cricket over test cricket as the reason," he said. "It's a factor, of course, but look at Vettori - you can't say that he hasn't had a steady diet of one-day cricket or Twenty20 or IPL; because he has.

"Yet he adapts and other people don't. So limited overs cricket and the enormous amount of it that is played these days is not the whole answer. That's not the difference.

"It comes from within, I think. Vettori has such high respect for the game of cricket, for test cricket and all its history and traditions. Stephen Fleming had that too and I think Vettori just gets it - he gets the difference between the various forms of cricket and he makes the adjustment. Most of the others don't seem to.

"Look at batsmen like, if we're talking about Sri Lanka, Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene. Jayawardene gets it too. He doesn't bat against us anything like he bats in one-day cricket. In tests, he is measured, thoughtful, watchful, skilful.

"Vettori understands test cricket; rates it as the highest form of the game; and puts huge value on it. I don't think many of the other Black Caps do. They might say they do, some would argue the point pretty vigorously, but I think you would find in their sub-consciousness that they don't place the same value on it that Dan does.

"He and Fleming were a bit the same. They both had to come up in the game and build their careers - they didn't get anything handed to them on a plate."

The modern game, he said, encouraged players to accept a plate-laden environment. He mentioned Martin Guptill, Oram and Brendon McCullum as batting talents of far greater dimensions than Vettori's but who do not approach his consistency at test level.

"Cricketers get everything too easy, too soon. They tour the world, they are paid well, they stay in top hotels and some have lost sight of the fact that a bit of hard work is quite important.

"Because of the prevalence of one-day and limited overs cricket, they don't have quite the emphasis on the fact that the next match is the most important one they will ever play. There'll always be another match coming along. Vettori always approaches the next match as his most important.

"There is an over-reliance on support people in the Black Caps. They are shielded by so many people doing different things for them that they forget how to do things for themselves. Sometimes, I think they get a lot of mixed messages and don't know what to think."

Guptill, he said, was "obviously talented. He has a lot of shots and he plays them and gets out." McCullum had "enormous talent" but wasn't demonstrating it in tests.

"I don't think he has a feeling for the game the way Vettori does; he's not committed to test match cricket in the same way and maybe everything has come a bit too easy to him too. He has no patience. Unless he is scoring at 3.5 or 4 runs an over he's not happy; he thinks he's not doing his job."

Oram was another with boundless talent but not the same application as Vettori. "I think he is one of those who subconsciously does just enough to retain his test place - but he doesn't have Dan's hunger or professionalism."

Strong stuff. The source admits the game has changed so that young cricketers know "the fastest way to the big money is through limited-overs cricket."

"But most people don't realise that it is test cricket which gives you the basis, the shots, the decision-making capability to play the shorter version of the games. It doesn't work the other way round."

Modern cricketers were not challenged enough. It was too easy to get into the Black Caps and not hard enough to be dropped, he said. There wasn't enough direct competition for spots. He also felt New Zealand cricket was "reaping what it sowed" when it moved away from pitches where the ball seamed around to "featherbed" pitches.

"Batsmen can just get out there and play shots - they don't have to defend, to survive any more so when they are put in that position in a test, they don't know what to do."

But if a more back-to-basics approach and application is required for test cricket, Reid says today's game has changed to an extent that is unlikely to happen.

Reid played just 19 tests and scored six centuries. He had an astonishing first-innings average of more than 61. Another never regarded as belonging to the top echelons of beauty when it came to batting, his consistency and application were never in doubt. He was a former high-performance manager with New Zealand Cricket before taking up his current position with Sparc.

"The nature of the game has changed," he says. "Back in the '70s and '80s, the limited-overs stuff was really just emerging and the concept of entertainment hadn't really taken hold. Now there is pressure on players to be entertaining in all forms of the game.

"The players of yesteryear who played the way I did would be very different players if we were raised today. There is a lot of one-day and Twenty20 cricket played in the formative years now and players are not imbued with the techniques of the game. We tend to hurry their exposure to the shorter game without the solid building blocks that are needed first.

"I always used to say that, if you don't have it before you get to the gate [leading to the pitch], you're not going to find it in the middle. In other words, if you don't have the technique and the shots, you're not going to find it out on the pitch. I think New Zealand cricket is under-performing a little bit there at the moment."

Reid also said there was too much pressure for age-group cricketers to win tournaments, rather than treating them as a formative ground for the development of techniques that would enable young players to make it in test cricket as well as the shorter versions.

"Test cricket is still the pinnacle. It's mental, it's strategic, it's about coping with different situations and strategies - and yet it's probably the least valued form of the game today."

Richardson puts matters slightly differently. The former opening bat and Herald on Sunday columnist says: "I don't see anyone else in the Black Caps who is so genuinely desperate to succeed, to perform, as Daniel Vettori.

"For me, it's hard to take what is going on in test cricket. The others might want to do it but subconsciously they do not have the same level of desperation.

"There's no doubt the engine room has been disturbed by Twenty20 and these guys aren't playing for their livelihood any more. They're doing too well [financially] whereas Vettori is captain and now a selector - this is his team and he wants them to do well. They think they want to do well too - but what we see is disappointment from them, not desperation.

"I'd never say that these guys try any less harder than our heroes of past days - I think they try very hard. They aren't blase. I still think there is a degree of professional pride there.

"But if you are motivated by money - and I am not saying everyone is - there are avenues to go down in cricket these days but test cricket is not one of them. Things like the IPL and limited-overs cricket have made a big impact and, at an almost subconscious level, I think some of our players are disaffected with test cricket."

The last word should come from Vettori himself. Speaking after the second-test loss to Sri Lanka, he said about the batting: "It's obviously a concern but I still back the guys that are there. They've still got an immense amount of talent, we just have to turn that talent into scores.

"We've been given a great example in how to do that with [Mahela] Jayawardene, Samaraweera and Sangakkara."

Amen.