Do you remember the days of good old fashioned death bowling? You know, thumping yorker after thumping yorker, dig that one out you muppet! Six in a row and that’s all it takes. Sometimes you miss one and the bat gets under it, leveraging that error all the way to the fence and beyond… but get it right and there’s nothing much they can do about it. They used to say that the great W.G. Grace could hit yorkers for six but then quite a lot of what they say about The Doctor can be filed under the label: ‘alternative facts’.

Marcus Stoinis (Stoinis the Moinace) gave Eden Park a beltering for the ages the other day. 11 sixes in an innings of 146*, almost single-handedly thwacking Australia to victory in a game which, at 54/5, 67/6 and 148/7, seemed to be dead and buried. Or at least it would have if this wasn’t a Hadlee-Chappell game and we hadn’t been conditioned to expect a few fireworks from those jokers.

Also, if you object to the ‘single-handed’ claim being used in a team sport then don’t – this was a rare case where that actually applies. Stoinis and Josh Hazlewood shared a 54 run partnership for the final wicket which ended when Hazelebags was run out without facing a ball. One of the craziest stat anomalies you’ll ever see.

There can be no denying the brilliance that was on show from Stoinis. Just his second ODI, having scored 4 on debut in England back in 2015. The next highest scorer in the Aussie innings was Pat Cummins with a swinging 36 during the fireworks stage of proceedings. Let’s also not forget that he took three-for with the ball, getting the key wickets of Martin Guptill, Kane Williamson and, erm, Colin Munro.

But for crying out loud, did they have to keep laying it on a platter for him?

Marcus Stoinis Last 30 Balls

6, 6, 0, 6, 0, 1 4, 1 , 1, 0, 0, 6, 6, 0, 1, 6, 4, 6 ,0, 1, 2, 0, 0, 0, 4, 0, 0, 0, 0, 6, 6, W

Incredible 🙏🙏
— Broken Cricket (@BrokenCricket) January 30, 2017

It ain’t easy to hit the middle of the bat over and over and over, even when you’re being served up pies… normally a dude mistimes one and then that’s them for the day, trudging back to the pavilion with bat tucked firmly under arm. Stoinis made two errors in his innings. The first was a low full-toss that he smashed to deep mid-off and straight to Kane Williamson but the skipper couldn’t hold it under the force and it popped out of his clutches.

Then there was the run out. Not the one that won it but the one that should have won it, Stoinis forced to dash for a single to hold the strike into the following over, still with 27 runs to win. Williamson fielded it cleanly but double guessed himself as to whether to whip it at the stumps, run it in and take the bails off with his hand or lob the ball gently to an onrushing teammate. The runners hesitated and mixed it up, Williamson did the same and missed his underhanded attempt at the wickets. There was also a possible run out the next over where the kiwis got so swept up in a possible caught behind that they forgot to guard for the single.

That’s the luck you need if you’re gonna win from the situation that the Aussies found themselves in. The pressure of the onslaught and the missed opportunities seemed to leave the NZ bowlers like rabbits in headlights, if there was a bowling plan in action here then we sure as hell didn’t bloody see it working.

Stoinis and Cummins did their bit to keep things level after the Stoinis/Faulkner rebuilding phase. But once Mitch Santner had Cummins stumped with a lovely bit of deception, Aussie were left with 91 runs to win from nine overs with the run-rate required at 10.11. They had two wickets left.

Fast forward some time and they almost won it with three overs to spare. Marcus Stoinis had 14 runs from his first 35 balls faced. He brought up his 50 with back to back sixes off of Santner, that taking him to 64 deliveries faced. He’d stand at the striker’s end another 53 times and score another 96 runs – that’s 108 from his last 55 balls faced.

If you want to look for a turning point, it would have been the over straight after Cummins was dismissed. On comes Jimmy Neesham. A warning that what you are about to read may not be suitable for small children, it contains strong elements of horror and extreme violence.

Ball 1: Wide down the leg side
Ball 2: Six, slower ball demolished off a back length
Ball 3: Wide for height
Ball 4: Six, full on off stump and despatched
Ball 5: Zero, Stoinis avoiding a short one
Ball 6: Six, another length ball that gets the treatment
Ball 7: Dropped by Williamson, no run
Ball 8: A single to retain the strike

Count ‘em all up and that’s 21 runs from the over, with 14 coming from the first two legitimate balls. That’d be the last we saw from Neesham but his habit of flirting with length and predictable slower balls would linger through the rest of the team. Mitch Santner was able to get Mitch Starc out next over at the expense of 9 runs, which was followed by Boult going for 18 (including five wides), Southee going for 17, Boult going for 7 (including a leg bye) and then Southee going for 12 with the winning wicket coming from the last ball. Here’s the wagon wheel (rock me mama…) for Stoinis the Moinace:

It doesn’t seem to be a fluke that he scored 111 runs from 64 balls when striking between long off and deep midwicket – including 10 of his 11 sixes. It was pretty simple stuff, he waited for the balls he could strike to the short boundaries straight and then he hit them, hard and far. According to Cricinfo, here’s the data on the lengths he faced:

Full Toss: 8 balls, 16 runs
Yorker: 1 ball, 0 runs
Full Length: 20 balls, 23 runs
Good Length: 43 balls, 45 runs
Short of Good: 25 balls, 22 runs
Short: 24 balls, 40 runs

That’s for his complete innings so you can assume that in the earlier stages they were hitting more of a length while he was playing defensively. It’s where those runs came from that tells the story, so many scored on balls well short of the traditional death bowling target zone: as full as possible. Southee stuck to an offside line and got smashed. Boult was straighter given he’s left handed but if he got too straight then it went the distance as well. Keep in mind that Stoinis used the depth of his crease superbly, looking to manufacture a bit of length even when he wasn’t dished it up already.

None of these guys are bowling fast enough to rough up the batsman, except for Lockie Ferguson (who took 2/44 and was the only guy to keep Stoinis under lock – although he mostly bowled during the middle). The persistence with hitting a length and rolling over their change-up speeds really didn’t do a whole lot for them, you’re pretty much just hoping the batsman makes a mistake (which to be fair he did and they didn’t capitalise). It makes sense that they might have thought bowling full at Eden Park is a danger with the short boundaries and all but giving Stoinis room to get under it didn’t work any better.

And it’s not like they can’t do it either, look at this masterpiece as painted by Tim Southee in 2010:

Actually, that might be the problem. With the exception of Southee, none of these dudes are really death bowlers. At the World Cup, Brendon McCullum never hesitated to bowl Trent Boult out before the 40th over. Mitch Santner is a spinner who doesn’t turn it a whole lot, he’s crafted perfectly for the middle overs. Ferguson? Maybe someday but for now he’s young, vulnerable and a little erratic. Best protect him as they did. As for Neesham and Munro, is it harsh to say they’re barely international bowlers at all? Probably, but asking those two to split ten overs is a big stretch against this team.

It ain’t just about having good bowlers, it’s about having the right bowlers in ODIs. You’ve gotta be able to design a plan that fills out a full 50 overs and those final ten notches are the most important of them all – so often that’s when the game is won or lost. It’s kinda weird that the Blackcaps don’t seem to know what they’re doing there, or if they do then they’re simply not executing. Luckily they did juuuust enough damage in the earlier stuff that they got away with it.

On this occasion, the problem was easy to diagnose: they choked. Right up until they didn’t. Still, it only takes a look at the line-up to see that this is going to be a regular problem until something changes. There’s no point comparing the Bangladesh series for obvious competitive reasons but the last Hadlee-Chappells, over in Oz, pretty much showed us the same dramas. This is how Aussie have gone in powerplay three against us this summer:

Chap-Hadz #1: 113/4 in 10.0 overs
Chap-Hadz #2: 126/2 in 10.0 overs
Chap-Hadz #3: 83/3 in 10.0 overs
Chap-Hadz #4: 87/2 in 7.0 overs

So… is it time for The Return of the Toe-Crusher or what?