Adam Parore: Doubts over Bond continuing to frustrate NZ

The Black Caps are on the verge of a crushing 3-0 test series victory over the West Indies but the frustration concerning Shane Bond continues.

Apart from his well-documented back problems, Bond has also suffered through illness and the effects of playing in the heat throughout his career.

Illness has struck again in this series and he didn't look too flash on television the other night.

Despite making all the right noises about playing today it's a real concern that he has been ill for some 10 days.

I remember playing alongside Bond in Brisbane early in his career when he blew up in the heat after just a few overs.

Mind you, it was so hot I had to tell Stephen Fleming early on that I could no longer run up to the stumps on a regular basis, as was my normal habit. I knew energy had to be conserved.

But Bond suffers more than most and it just adds to the extreme frustration of New Zealand continuing to have doubts over their world class quick.

It's a testament to Bond's ability just how highly he is regarded around the world because almost any other bowler with his relatively meagre career record - he's played only 13 tests - would hardly rate a second look from the great and the good.

Whether he can go the distance over the next five days remains to be seen.

But there is one consolation.

It is remarkable how often New Zealand have succeeded with a below-par attack supplemented by a bowler like Nathan Astle.

Often, when I was playing, we would have Daniel Vettori at one end and an Astle-type nailing the game down at the other.

It wasn't pretty cricket to watch or play but it so often worked. After 80 minutes of grinding it out, we would have a vital wicket for the loss of only 25 runs.

Of course this comes nowhere near matching the excitement of watching Bond racing in to bowl, but if you play smart you can cover for such losses.

Fleming seems to have unfortunately slipped back into the Flem of old, failing to convert his starts into big scores.

At about the time I retired, it looked as though Fleming had got past that hump in his career, but the old problems have resurfaced in the past couple of years.

Looking at a player like Brian Lara and then at Fleming, it is hard to see why one can bat on to the huge scores, and the other falls short. It's the difference between greatness and being just another good test player.

Fleming will end up with a test average a good five or six runs short of what it should have been. He even said last year it had got beyond the point where he could rescue this situation - that his numbers would never stand out in the history books.

I wonder if this thinking has infiltrated his game, and taken away that extra ruthlessness needed to get the big hundreds?

Players like Sachin Tendulkar and Ricky Ponting are almost robotic and are equipped with superbly consistent techniques which take them to the massive scores.

I'd certainly rather watch Brian Lara batting for a day than either of those two, although Ponting's pull shot certainly makes the heart race.

And on the subject of Lara, I'm certainly not going to write him off yet in this third test.

I've heard theories that he is a goner and won't find his form here, but I would still advise the Black Caps to tread carefully.

Napier usually produces a wicket that can turn into a belter with a couple of days of sun - and it has the additional pace rarely found in our conditions.

And they are conditions that will suit a player of Lara's abilities, assuming he can negotiate his way through the early stages.

As for the West Indies' chances of victory, they will already be thinking of home and I can't see them turning things around. It gets pretty difficult at the end of a tour when you can hardly remember your last victory.

And I just can't see their bowling attack getting us out twice.