Blackcaps Tim Southee is bowled during play on day five of the first test against Bangladesh. Photosport
Blackcaps Tim Southee is bowled during play on day five of the first test against Bangladesh. Photosport
OPINION
Clearly the toughest thing about winning a world test cricket championship is the next one – as we are seeing now with the Black Caps.
It's hellish hard to maintain the same standards, let alone improve, and there are mitigating circumstances. However, the Black Caps and coach Gary Stead,in particular, seem mired in stale thinking rather than looking for change that might help them add to last year's world test championship.
It's not just that disquieting loss to Bangladesh. The two tests against India – one a hiding, the other a strange hesitancy to attack the chance to win a series there for the first time – also showed the "world champion" label is already wearing thin.
One of the problems is selection – relying wholly on the usual battery of pace bowlers on an unresponsive pitch instead of selecting left-arm spinner Ajaz Patel for the first test against Bangladesh, particularly after his 10-wicket heroics against India.
If you want to conduct the orchestra, of course you have to turn your back on the crowd but, in explaining his decision to leave Patel out of the test team, Stead said: "I think if you look at the reality of spin bowlers in New Zealand in the last four or five years, there haven't been a lot of them taking truckloads of wickets.
"That's not necessarily the spinners' fault, but shows the strength of where we're at with our pace bowling unit at the moment. Which one of the four quicks are you going to drop that he'll be better than?"
Bangladesh's captain Mominul Haque (L) with team mate Mushfiqur Rahim walk from the field after their win over the Black Caps. Photosport
The logic is skewed. When he says spinners haven't taken "truckloads of wickets" in recent years, he really means New Zealand spinners. Visiting spinners seem to do fine – Bangladesh (even without their leading spinner), for example, took five for 102 off 38 overs in New Zealand's first innings.
It's not just about Patel; New Zealand lack a true all-rounder at the moment, so it's curious there's no place in the test team for Daryl Mitchell. There are real concerns about the batting of Tom Latham, Tom Blundell, Henry Nicholls, Ross Taylor and an admittedly injury-affected Kane Williamson, missing for the last two tests.
As for which of the four quicks would be dropped to make way for Patel, Stead asked the wrong question. The one to make way would be Rachin Ravindra, the young man being groomed as an all-rounder and who clearly has talent but maybe more with bat than ball.
He scored 4 in the first innings and 16 in the second and has only 73 runs from his first six bats. A slow start to a test career is nothing new – Martin Crowe amassed 20 runs in his first four test innings and look what he became.
They clearly like Ravindra's batting lower down but, if New Zealand is ever going to break out of its reliance on medium-fast bowlers, encouraging the talent of a specialist like Patel seems blindingly obvious, even if New Zealand conditions do not much help spinners. That, as previously pointed out, didn't seem to be a problem for Daniel Vettori.
Ravindra bowled well enough though his none for 67 off 28 overs of left-arm spin rarely looked like bringing a wicket. Patel has guile, flight and more variation – and his 10 wickets against India included the world's best batsman, Virat Kohli.
While we are talking about New Zealand conditions, no one in the Black Caps read the Mt Maunganui pitch right. It was a true batting surface; even the snicks from the quicks didn't carry to the catchers. At this level, that's a bad misread, maybe seeing only what they wanted to see.
Stale thinking is also putting up the same stable of quicks, putting the ball outside the off stump and becoming ever more frustrated when the wickets didn't magically amass. The Bangladeshis showed the value of attacking the stumps.
I say all this in the knowledge that this New Zealand pace attack will do the business again, maybe even in this second test. But it's not just selection/old thinking that is slightly worrying about the Black Caps' post-world championship campaign.
Never mind the rout in the second test against India, it was odd watching the jubilation over the (admittedly compelling) cliffhanger draw in the first test and Patel and Ravindra's 10th wicket they-shall-not–pass stand.
But…shouldn't the Black Caps have won? Or at least made a better show of trying to win? Why did they look so hesitant chasing only 284?
The batting was brittle and words that came to mind when watching both New Zealand innings and some of Kane Williamson's captaincy decisions: timidity, pessimism.
Again, there were mitigating factors, the horror pitch topmost. But it was hard to escape the feeling that, had Brendon McCullum been skipper, the Black Caps' pursuit may have been different. The world champs didn't look like they thought they could win; the pitch's mind-scrambling properties weighed heavy; they played not to lose.
This team looks like it needs a shot in the arm, a wholly apt metaphor in these Covid days. It starts with the off-field thinkers.
