Tagged with: Champions Trophy
Would Colin de Grandhomme have done worse? Would Jeetan Patel have offered something? Do we need to rethink the all-rounder situation? Is this all too many questions for an excerpt?
There’s always a bit of debate with national team selections, it’s all part of the fun. But the Blackcaps over the last twelve months or so it feels like everyone’s had something to moan about.
One Blackcap was fantastic, Ross Taylor, Tim Southee and Trent Boult were solid, Guppy was out of form and the rest is a culmination of a terrible lack of clarity and planning.
The Blackcaps gotta beat Bangladesh and every team's rollin' out a different set of all-rounders. Aotearoa just needs one all-rounder to stand up and say "yo I'm the mantis, y'all suck".
The Blackcaps got touched up by England and Luke Ronchi returned to standard service, unfortunately we've also got other blokes taking on Rochi's consistency.
Kane Williamson has started the 2017 Champions Trophy like a beast and the Blackcaps looked good against Australia. Now for the Poms.
Corey Anderson will need to be smacking the ball and dishing up quality left-arm seam for the Blackcaps to beat Australia in their first Champions Trophy game. Actually, they'll probably need Anderson to be better than he was before.
Luke Ronchi top-scored for the Blackcaps against India, which doesn't ease concerns but does show hope for him as Martin Guptill's opening partner. And what do we do with all these all-rounders?
Tom Latham, Neil Broom and Ross Taylor finished the tri-series in style, but while the Blackcaps lost to Bangladesh, England and South Africa did precisely what the kiwis haven't done during this series.
Ross Taylor and Tom Latham are preparing for Champions Trophy cricket by scoring plenty of runs as the Blackcaps handled their business against Ireland.
Neil Broom has scored the most runs in this tri-series against Ireland and Bangladesh, he just doesn't have a great record against better cricket teams.
Aotearoa got the tri-series in Ireland off to a winning start, so peep our debrief; which players were selected? How's the wicket-keeping situation looking? Could Scott Kuggeleijn overtake Jimmy Neesham?
There are win-now approaches and there are build-for-the-future approaches and then there’s the Lesson Blackcaps (Lesson = Larsen + Hesson), where players are dropped without explanation, others are recalled for tenuous reasons and nobody seems to really know where they stand outside a few main heroes.
Aotearoa has three world-class batsmen, but it'll probably be up to Neil Broom at No.5 to chip in with some big runs against Australia and England.
There's far more confusion in the Blackcaps Champions Trophy squad than just the wicket-keepers...
We've got a Blackcaps Champions Trophy squad and it's kinda weird, so weird that we've got to double up on writing about it. Here's something about the wicket-keeping situation...