Black Caps Black Book .../Diary - ODI Cricket Preview Holy Cow We Were In The World Cup Final!
The World Cup, it was pretty cool wasn't it? How we did good at this cricket thing, a bit of a fairytale just without actually winning anything, oh but the Black Caps won over the hearts of a nation, yeah great.
The World Cup, it's in the past.
The first ODI against England gets underway overnight and the Black Caps head into the series as favourites thanks to their performances in the World Cup. However, as I said, the World Cup is in the past and it's clear that England see it the same way as their squad is full of fresh faces and blokes who had nothing to do with their World Cup failure.
England are a completely different team and who knows, they may serve up utter trash once again but I highly doubt it. To think that England will crumble in this ODI series would be foolish and to think that what happened in the World Cup has any relevance to this series is also foolish, so don't be foolish.
The Black Caps squad, well I like what they've done in adding a few new pieces. Mitchell Santner is a promising all rounder who could possibly fill the boots of Nathan McCullum as the spinning-all rounder in the team. He's a lefty, with both bat and ball who averages 26.78 with the bat in domestic 50 over cricket and he's taken 22 wickets in 19 domestic 50 over games at an average of 29.81. I'd like to see him play all throughout the series to be honest, why not? Nathan McCullum won't be there at the next World Cup and while he's a great lad to have in the squad, Santner should be given plenty of time in the middle as soon as possible.
The other newbie is Ben Wheeler who has been trooping away on the domestic scene for a few years now and is deserving of his sniff. He's a left armer, cut from a similar cloth to Trent Boult and he hasn't played a whole lot of 50 over cricket but in first class cricket he's snared 92 wickets in 29 games. With a nice runs per over of 3.07 and a bowling average of 27, it's clear that Wheeler goes alright rolling that left arm over.
The rest of the squad is pretty stock standard, but expect the likes of Mitchell McClenaghan to be given plenty of game time. McClenaghan will probably be the only bloke to come into the playing 11 consistently who wasn't part of the 11 for the World Cup, maybe Tom Latham as well, but McClenaghan is hot off an IPL where he was simply fabulous. In 12 matches, big Mitch took 18 wickets, ranking him 8th in the whole IPL and of the three other bowlers to take 18 wickets, McClenaghan bowled the least amount of overs.
You've got to think that McClenaghan will be given a chance, or at least more game time than what he saw in the World Cup. To be honest, I don't really see the need to play Tim Southee and Trent Boult in all of these ODI's, they don't even really need to play half of them and I'd like to see them part of a rotating cast who are all given a chance to impress. This is partly thanks to their large workload over the Test series and in recent months, but we need to start building international quality depth and this is the perfect chance to do so.
Our bowling stocks consist of Southee, Boult, McClenaghan, Wheeler and Matt Henry. With Corey Anderson hopefully lacing up as the all rounder, I would love to see a game where the bowling attack is McClenaghan, Wheeler and Henry. I do suspect that they'll start with Southee and Boult though and it's hard to ignore the wicket-taking ability of McClenaghan. I do think it's important right now though that we stay clear of ranking our bowlers, they are all part of the bowling group and they will all need to be able to do a job.
The batting side of things is much less interesting. As I said, Latham is the only bloke who could find himself as the new boy in the batting line up and I'd like to see it. There isn't much room though and you'd have to think that Grant Elliot and Latham are competing for the same spot. Now, Elliot well, heaven forbid I say anything slightly negative about the lad, but it's highly likely that he won't be around at the next World Cup either, so I hope we get to see Latham given a chance in the middle order.
That being said, our strongest ODI side right now has Elliot in it and Latham carrying the drinks. This is great though as once again we can keep guys fresh and rotate different guys through the batting line up depending on how Brendon McCullum and Mike Hesson see things.
Vibe-wise, this series should be all about continuing to build and improve as an ODI side. We are in a fantastic spot where we are able to bring a few younger guys into an environment that has a solid core group of wise guys. Personally, I would love to see different guys given a chance as much as possible, which doesn't mean that we're taking England lightly. The objective is still to win, but we need to have a pool of players who have experienced all of this over and over again. We can get away with a bit of rotation as we still have some of the world's best ODI players in the squad, to not make the most of this opportunity wouldn't be wise.
Be weary of England though, I like their squad mainly because of the intent they have shown in their selections. Do you know who Sam Billings, Jason Roy and David Willey are? No, which is great for English cricket.