Pondering Blackcaps Bliss ... or Blackcaps Bullkaka

ARE YOU FUCKIN READY KANE?

And so the Blackcaps summer begins. 

As always, there has been plenty said about the Blackcaps' cricketing exploits this summer and while much of it is justified, coming to any insightful conclusions has been difficult. There's nothing all that insightful about celebrating this as 'the best Blackcaps team ever' for example, as it overlooks a rather important insight of there being a lack of super-duper competitive cricket thus far.

I can't start to build my 1st XI in ODI cricket with the World Cup lurking on the horizon, until I've seen numerous players put in high-pressure situations against quality opposition - same goes with this T20 group now that the World T20 tournament is set in the diary. It's always beneficial to spread the positive vibes throughout Aotearoa among the casual cricket fan who wants to see the Blackcaps dominate, yet for learning what the Blackcaps are all about, this summer has been rather empty.

Those casual kiwi cricket fans also buy into everything that Lesson says and youz know how I feel about this whole Lesson situation. This is why my interest in the Blackcaps is ramping up, just as I'm swinging into #KiwiNRL and Aotearoa Warriors mode; these next few weeks will tell us all we need to know about the Blackcaps as their current incarnation.

As much as I view Lesson as bringers of fear and illusionists, this swings both ways. 

Take the T20 team for example - that everyone is hating on - and peep that all Blackcaps teams suck in Australia, so there's no real need to dive into criticisms of a team that rolled out the status-quo to start this tri-series. They lost T20 games to Pakistan, which also happened to be the last games of Pakistan's terrible tour and it's fairly logical to suggest that Pakistan would be at their best in foreign conditions at the end of a tour.

I definitely don't think Lesson are anywhere near on par with a BBL franchise in terms of building a T20 team (or Australia with T20 coaching gun Ricky Ponting helping out), although this isn't because of their results in recent T20s. This is because of their weird selections/T20 theories and my opinion, along with many of your opinions about the Blackcaps T20 team, will come from their performances in Aotearoa against England and Australia. 

To get into a preview of these T20 games starting tonight, would distract you from the overall anticipation that I'm feeling. Australia look exactly how you'd expect them to given their selections are based on the best T20 competition in the world and who knows what England are going to dish up. I'm simply eager to learn and start this stage of the summer where pressure either builds diamonds, or highlights the flaws.

And this is more about the T20 tri-series in conjunction with the England ODI and Test series that follow. England are a fantastic ODI team and they will be desperate to put their Ashes series behind them with strong performances in conditions that suit them better than Australia, setting up an almighty end to the kiwi summer.

Spend a few minutes, after reading this and before the T20 tonight, pondering the bigger picture of what this moment means for kiwi cricket. This next month or so could showcase a golden generation of kiwi cricketers (Hesson's a lucky coach) and have us all fizzing with excitement about two major limited overs tournaments that the Blackcaps should do very well in. 

Or, we could see the veil of illusion lifted and certain aspects of the Blackcaps exposed which would be equally as beneficial given that there's still time to make changes and build towards the World Cup. 

Ponder that bigger picture, the importance of this moment because the next few weeks will be all about the details. I'm laying down this bigger picture because I know that I'm jumping into a rip where I'll stay calm, go with the flow of the ocean and deal with all the minor aspects of the Blackcaps performances, before emerging from the whitewash and re-assessing the situation. 

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Peace and love 27.