We have waited a long time for Test cricket to have some kind of context wrapped around it and now, after the first Test vs Sri Lanka, Aotearoa's Blackcaps have got their Test Championship campaign off to the worst start.
In exploring these domestic cricket contracted player lists ahead of the 2019/20 summer, I am three squads deep and can already double down on my hunch that kiwi cricket is in a great space in terms of a strong, talented contingent of young cricketers settling into domestic cricket.
In the current climate, there isn't a whole lot that can be described as 'solid' about Sri Lankan cricket and changes to their Test squad, under an interim coach set the scene for this intriguing Test series vs Aotearoa's Blackcaps
Sneaking under the cricketing radar has been the start of the 2019 Women's Super League T20 competition in England, where Aotearoa always has a steady presence.
Henry Shipley, Cole McConchie and Blake Coburn are enjoying a wonderful English summer playing club cricket and were nice enough to share some yarns with El Niche Cache.
Glorious Test cricket is back and with a whole new dose of context sprinkled on to them whites like chicken salt.
You’ve already heard all about it and it’s been in the works for about a decade now. But that was all in the conceptual stage. Now we’re about to get into the actual cricket… so what’s going on here? Please, take a seat my friend and let us discuss this bad boy.
Another cricket season, another Central Districts Stags squad that is stacked with talent.
In working through a 'winners and losers' idea from the Blackcaps World Cup campaign, it became rather clear that such a yarn wouldn't be all that interesting.
Auckland Aces have sorted out their contracted players group for the upcoming season, led by recruiting Kyle Jamieson and Corey Anderson, with a strong foundation of now established domestic troopers.
Now this is where the fun stuff happened. The Blackcaps bowlers began the 2019 World Cup by bowling Sri Lanka out for 136 and then pretty much carried on from there, slicing through a pretty dangerous Bangladesh batting lineup to bowl them out for 244 and then skittling Afghanistan for 172.
Well, if boundary countback was gonna be an issue then no surprises that we struggled there, considering that only three teams hit fewer boundaries than the Blackcaps throughout the entire tournament and they were: Sri Lanka (played three fewer games), South Africa (played two fewer games), and Afghanistan (played one fewer game and was only a single boundary behind our tally).
How do you even begin to comprehend something like that? To have been so close to something so special only to come away empty-handed, it’s excruciating. The Blackcaps gave it a little bit of everything and it wasn’t quite enough, not by the tiniest of margins, and I’m afraid that this one is going to sting for a very long time.
As the Blackcaps came to terms with a famous victory, Tom Latham completing a routine catch behind the stumps off the bowling of Jimmy Neesham to dismiss Yuzvendra Chahal and book a place in the World Cup final, captain Kane Williamson had a look on his face like he couldn’t quite remember if he’d put his phone on charge before he left the hotel.
Somehow the Blackcaps have made eight World Cup semi-finals including four in a row - they’ve even won two of them! - so here’s a bit of a breeze through and a history lesson all in one.
At the time of writing this, England have just won their semi-final against Australia to set up a World Cup final between England and Aotearoa.
There is no plan or script that the Aotearoa vs India World Cup semi-final can fit into, yet in a freestyle sense, everything fell beautifully in favour of the Blackcaps snatching victory.
The hope remains after Aotearoa crawled their way to 211/5 vs India in the World Cup semi-final with play to start again tonight.
Forget the weird blue cheese taste left from the last three games and banish the long list of shenanigans from selectors and NZC, Aotearoa's Blackcaps are in the Cricket World Cup semi-final.
One of the weirdest yarns to be rolled out prior to the World Cup revolved around comparing the 2015 CWC Blackcaps roster to the group of 2019.