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John Bracewell on the New Zealand team.

James

Cricket Web Owner
Some very interesting thoughts by NZ coach John Bracewell on NZ radio today:

* We pick our best six batsmen (that's why Marshall and Fulton open)

* The poor standard of domestic pitches prevents us being able to develop opening batsmen. Until the pitches improve, our opening batsmen won't.

* Vincent and Sinclair were ruled out because of their baby and marriage. 10 days
conditioning is required before you can play cricket in SAF, and because they weren't in the initial camp, they weren't considered.

* NZ cricket has improved since I took over, depth has increased and we now have a proper 'A' team structure in place.

* Although we have dropped in the Test rankings, it is happening to all the teams rated two through seven. Australia are clearly at the top, with the West Indies/Zimbabwe/Bangladesh clearly at the bottom. The other six Test countries are all very evenly matched.

* McCullum batting at 6, Franklin 7, Vettori 8, Mills at 9 in the near future.
 

Craig

World Traveller
I can assume James Franklin is now considered an all-rounder after his recent Test ton?
 

Prince EWS

Global Moderator
* McCullum batting at 6, Franklin 7, Vettori 8, Mills at 9 in the near future.
Would that mean Oram at 5? Seems a bit un-neccessarily strong in terms of bowling to me. It also contradicts the "We pick our best six batsmen" point mentioned above...
 

Autobahn

State 12th Man
Sorry guys but oram isn't a number 5, you normally want a more steady batsmen to be in that position to anchor against collapses and oram's more a number 6-7 biffer.

And are pitches in NZ that poor? I mean i remember they used to be pretty bad, being very slow and low are they still that bad?
 

Craig

World Traveller
I know the Tests and ODIs are mainly held on the rugby grounds (Jade Stadium, Carisbrook, Eden Park etc.) so therefore drop-in pitches are used, but are a lot of FC nd List-A matches are held on other grounds? If so therefore shouldn't it be on the onus of the local cricket association and the NZCC to make sure pitches are up to standard?
 

thedarkmullet

School Boy/Girl Captain
Prince EWS said:
Would that mean Oram at 5? Seems a bit un-neccessarily strong in terms of bowling to me. It also contradicts the "We pick our best six batsmen" point mentioned above...
Agreed. Counting Oram that would mean six bowlers who could be considered frontline, the Aussies get by on four. It seems as though hes looking more towards picking our best 5 all-rounders than batsman.
 

Sir Redman

State Vice-Captain
James said:
Some very interesting thoughts by NZ coach John Bracewell on NZ radio today:

* We pick our best six batsmen (that's why Marshall and Fulton open)

* The poor standard of domestic pitches prevents us being able to develop opening batsmen. Until the pitches improve, our opening batsmen won't.

* Vincent and Sinclair were ruled out because of their baby and marriage. 10 days
conditioning is required before you can play cricket in SAF, and because they weren't in the initial camp, they weren't considered.

* NZ cricket has improved since I took over, depth has increased and we now have a proper 'A' team structure in place.

* Although we have dropped in the Test rankings, it is happening to all the teams rated two through seven. Australia are clearly at the top, with the West Indies/Zimbabwe/Bangladesh clearly at the bottom. The other six Test countries are all very evenly matched.

* McCullum batting at 6, Franklin 7, Vettori 8, Mills at 9 in the near future.
The standard of domestic pitches has improved. If Bracewell actually had a look at the scorecards from recent domestic seasons, he'd see far fewer sub-150 scores and far more batsmen scoring hundreds. It wasn't that long ago that we were only seeing around 5 hundreds a season; now we're seeing individual players scoring 3/4 tons each season (Jamie How springs to mind with his 3 consecutive hundreds last year).
 

Smudge

Hall of Fame Member
Yeah, the domestic pitches claim is rubbish. By and large, they're all pretty good surfaces. A couple of years ago, the new University Oval track was pretty rubbish, but there were plenty of 250+ scores in State Shield cricket there this season.
 

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