Low key enjoying David Warner's passion and captaincy.

As alluded to in the preview for this tri-series final between Australia and Aotearoa, wickets would determine who would be victorious. Although Mother Nature intervened and snatched a fairly funky ending away from us, the way Aaron Finch and Glenn Maxwell re-assessed conditions, knocked the ball around the field without taking any major risks and flexed their experience muscles after Aotearoa pounced with a few wickets, suggested that Australia were still the top dawgs of Eden Park.

In fact, Mother Nature intervening only ramps up the importance of wickets because if wickets play a key role in swinging ol' mates Duckworth and Lewis in favour of the bowlers.

With a slightly better pitch (more even for bat and ball), Australia slowed Aotearoa's run-scoring with wickets throughout the innings. Wickets fell in overs 5, 6, 8, 10, 11, 13, 15 and 20, which kept new batsmen coming to the crease and the pressure of having to score rather swiftly - especially at Eden Park - works directly against having new batsmen come in every over or so.

Defending 150, Aotearoa didn't offer the same threat as Australia. As lovely as it is for Ish Sodhi to concede just 5.25rpo, I view this is being rather similar to the Daniel Vettori situation back in the day in ODI cricket where Australia would happily score 3rpo off Vettori, as long as he didn't take multiple wickets. Sodhi is the most threatening Blackcaps bowler and much like Afghanistan's gun leggy Rashid Khan, their value is in their ability to take 2+ wickets in T20 cricket.

Australia sat on Sodhi and attacked other bowlers, going one step further than scoring off of Colin Munro as the 5th option and taking the attack to Trent Boult and Tim Southee. While the three leading wicket-takers in this tri-series were Andrew Tye, Kane Richardson and Billy Stanlake, it was Ashton Agar who did the damage in the final and finished as the best bowler overall (16.42avg/6.38rpo). In doing so, Agar put Sodhi and Mitchell Santner in the shade:

Agar - 7w @ 16.42avg/6.38rpo.
Sodhi - 5w @ 32avg/8.42rpo.
Santner - 3w @ 36.66avg/9.42rpo.

Santner also scored 1 run off 5 balls in his 2inns this series, while Sodhi (13 off 19) and Southee (14 off 9) both did better with their 2inns swinging the willow.

I also reckon that Aotearoa's bowlers should have a massive advantage at Eden Park. Australia made the right adjustments after Tye, Stanlake, Richardson and Agar played their first games at Eden Park, thus they were better in their second appearance. That the Blackcaps bowlers were shown up twice at a ground that offers them a unique advantage is also kinda dumb and doesn't reflect well on their coaching.

And I'd go a step further in suggesting that Australia appeared to be the smarter team - selections, coaching, captaincy, tactics etc.

The overall vibe I leave this T20 tri-series with is that Lesson's decision to do the exact opposite to Australia in selecting the best cricketers instead of the best T20 players, did not work. Sure, D'Arcy Short is the headline act in that regard but I again revert back to wickets because Aotearoa's Test bowlers in Boult, Southee and Santner were out-bowled by Tye, Richardson, Stanlake and Agar; Tye is the only one who played in the ODI series vs England.

This narrative of best T20 players vs best cricketers in Aotearoa intrigued me leading into the series and the proof is blatantly in the pudding. Aotearoa went 1-3 in the return leg of the series, 1-4 overall and in losing key T20 moments, the Blackcaps looked how a T20 international team looked a few years ago while Australia resembled a group of T20 assassins.

Of course, Aotearoa doesn't have the Big Bash League to draw upon and there's a fairly hefty jump up from Super Smash to T20 Internationals, let alone Super Smash to BBL. The only people to blame their are NZC for robbing the Super Smash of quality, or allowing a flow of kiwis to better themselves in the BBL without impeding on the Super Smash. We have a World T20 tournament to look forward to and this should be treated with the respect it deserves in the sense that the best T20 players from Aotearoa should be given time to come together.

Many of the best Super Smash players are younger lads, who need time at the international level to make up for that hefty gap in quality between the two levels. That would mean rolling out a very different T20 squad for any series this year and giving the likes of Glenn Phillips, Tim Seifert, Tom Bruce, Josh Clarkson, Blair Tickner, Seth Rance and Daryl Mitchell an opportunity to suss out the level up.

Let's not forget that the best player of the Super Smash was Anton Devcich and he's just wrapped up playing in the Hong Kong T20 Blitz, alongside other T20 jokers Johan Botha, Darren Sammy and Ben Laughlin. It's borderline criminal that such a dominant Super Smash player like Devcich wasn't really considered; it's a war-crime to think that Anaru Kitchen was selected ahead of Devcich.

Mitchell McClenaghan is one of two kiwis in the BBL and is a renowned T20 bowler, who was also overlooked. In McClenaghan and Devcich we have two T20 players who have the experience to seamlessly slot into the Blackcaps T20 side, yet neither was given any loving.

This is frustrating on two levels, compounding the frustration:

Younger/domestic players are not given time to make the adjustments. We've got no idea what Seth Rance or Tom Bruce can do against quality opposition, or after multiple T20I games because their kicked to the curb without that luxury. These players are also not even considered close to selection and with the World T20 in mind, we need to build our way into the World T20 by giving players such opportunities.

The best T20 players in Aotearoa don't get a crack. The difference between the formats isn't paid enough respect by Lesson and with the paragraph above in mind, the jump up from the Super Smash is also not paid enough respect.

I had hoped that Lesson would prove me wrong and to be honest, the Blackcaps only had to win a couple games in Aotearoa and lose the final for me to be all good with this tri-series. The Blackcaps went 1-4 and only a few weeks after everyone was rather smug about T20I rankings, I have been unfortunately vindicated.

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Peace and love 27.