Cricket: Too early to put champion tag on Caps

By Don Cameron

at large

Now that we have sobered up a little and and put away the video replays of those last magical hours at Kennington Oval last weekend, it might be worthwhile to make a deeper study of the New Zealand cricketers' astonishing demolition of England's apology for a team.

The New Zealanders died on their own sword when they lost the first test. They showed great courage to win at Lord's by nine wickets. They were heading for a sweeping win at Old Trafford until the the mad Manchester weather foiled them.

A test series win had been within their reach, and then snatched away.

This disappointment might have broken the spirit of a softer team. Instead it seemed to harden the New Zealanders' attitude in the fourth test.

They ripped through the England second innings with a definite take-no-prisoners attitude.

As some of us were rolling about on the carpet when the television pictures showed the end of the England batting surrender and various bottles were opened at a ghostly hour, the comments of Geoff Howarth did not immediately sink in.

Howarth, who was serving his expert-comments apprenticeship, said the New Zealanders had achieved great results in England, but must regard those as the start, not the end, of their development as an international side.

They must return home, rethink the lessons of England, go to India and use that as another step up from close to the bottom of the test match ladder.

When you look back at the statistics of the tour, which seem more pertinent than the numbers usually are, you find strength for Howarth's proposition.

The New Zealanders' test series against England must be taken in isolation.

The events there may not bear any relation to what happens when New Zealand tour India in October-December, or when the West Indies and Australia tour New Zealand next summer.

New Zealand have long been a more effective team under dodgy playing conditions. Their bowlers have always needed a little extra help to gain a win, and batsmen used to struggling for survival - the Wrights and Jones and Congdons of this world - have tended to prosper on wayward pitches.

From visual and statistical evidence, the four pitches used for tests in England were of inferior quality, in that they seldom offered an equal balance between batsman and bowler.

The use of the English ball, which gives exaggerated swing and seam movement, further favoured the bowlers.

So we have four tests in which England only twice went past 200 for an innings, averaging only 22.2 a wicket. New Zealand prospered more, with Matt Horne's splendid century at Lord's taking the total to 358, and Craig McMillan's muscular century at Old Trafford lifting the innings total to 496 for nine declared.

Yet the New Zealanders averaged only 27.4 runs a wicket - rather confirming the impression given by the batsmanship, or lack of it, that these were two moderate teams having a modest test series.

The bowlers prospered as the ball swung and seamed from the first over to the 81st, and on pitches which offered erratic bounce and thus no comfort or security to the batsmen.

England's quicker bowlers took 31 wickets, leaving 18 for the spinners, Peter Such and Phil Tufnell. The New Zealand imbalance was more marked, and undoubtedly the key to the whole series.

The five New Zealand quicker bowlers took 47 wickets, leaving only 10 for Daniel Vettori and two for Chris Harris.

Seamers who had looked like lambs against South Africa on the flat home pitches last summer, and perhaps even sheep-like (Geoff Allott excepted) in the World Cup one-dayers, suddenly became like man-eating tigers in the four tests.

Howarth was right. England were so bad it is not possible to measure exactly the quality of the New Zealand win, especially in a series that could have been won by either side on the last day.

Perhaps the tour of India will give a more accurate measure of New Zealand's upward progress. Unless the New Zealanders can transport English pitches and boxes of English balls to the subcontinent, wickets will be harder to find there.