Someone mentioned a while ago that the new tactic of NZ was to bat normally at the start and not try to hit over the top early, just retain wickets for later on in the innings. That seems to be the way they have played. I hope its not true as they are putting themselves under so much pressure at the end of an innings and sometimes we just dont make it like tonight. The first one dayer we almost couldnt muster 180 odd. We almost ran out of time. Same in the second game. And the same tonight.
Surely you should be trying to win the game with an over or two to spare, rather than waiting until its late in the innings. And that means going hard early is important. A good first 6 or 7 overs and it would have been no problem, but we just try and pace it right through and put pressure on ourselves right until the end.
When you think about it its better to have a go early. Asking genuine batsmen to hit a few boundaries early is better than asking tailenders to come in, in a pressure situation and hit boundaries early at the end of a game. McCullum and Elliott paced it so they needed 40 odd of 25 balls. A situation where one wicket means a tailender has to come in and deal with that situation. Not smart. Have a go earlier, get the runs down to something like a run a ball, then at least if you get out the tailender has a bit of time to see a few deliveries before he needs to smack it.
I hope its not a new policy of theirs to go slowly at the start and save wickets for later. Always going to be under pressure and like tonight, could lose the game with plenty of wickets left. Brings up the question Ive always wondered about with cricket coaches generally coaching players that are better than them. I hope this new Moles fellow isnt coaching them to bat like an English county cricketer from the 70's.
Then again maybe we just had a bad day.
Firstly, New Zealand were chasing very low scores in the first 2 ODI's, so there was absolutely no pressure to score rapidly in the first 15. Indeed, losing a bucket load of early wickets was the only way NZ was going to lose those matches, so the slow and steady approach was an intelligent way to approach things. Sure things ended up being a bit closer then we all would've liked. But that was only due to a couple of shocking umpiring decisions in the first game. In the second, while it looked close, realistically we probably could've chased the runs down about 5 overs quicker if we'd had to.
In the 3rd ODI, the 4 rpo at the start of the innings was hardly ideal. But McCulllum was injured, and wasn't going to bat unless we got really close, which effectively meant we had 4 specialist batsmen in Fulton, Guptill, Broom and Taylor. The onis would've been on those three to score most of the runs. No one saw Elliot's excellent hundred coming. Could you imagine Kyle Mills coming out to bat in the 20th over, with the score on 100 odd? Nope, but if we'd lost another couple of early wickets trying to push up the run rate, it was a realistic proposition.
In the 4th ODI, we were batting first and batted poorly. No excuses, but it happens sometimes. We all know what happened in the 5th ODI.
As for last night, again we didn't get a slow start because of an overly cautious approach. We lost two early wickets, and Bracken bowled two brilliant overs, which meant after 4 overs we were going at 4. Even then, by the end of the power play we'd pushed the run rate up to about 7.2, which was only a little below the RRPO of 7.5. The fault certainly wasn't on the top order for putting too much pressure on the middle. We would've won quite comfortably if Elliot had pushed ones and twos rather than having a complete brain melt and we would've won even more comfortably if McCullum hadn't been freakishly caught in the 18th over.
Yes, it's all nice and wonderful when we get off to an absolute screamer. But I can only think of 3 occasions since the last World Cup that we've had such an incredible start. Once, when we were only chasing down 150 off 30 overs against a wayward England bowling attack. Secondly, again against England, when chasing 240 we scored 100 in the first 11 overs, then got too comfy with our position, batted slowly, lost a bunch of wickets and wound up having to rely on Taylor and the rain to bail us out. And finally the 5th match against the windies, when essentially the exact same thing happened. So clearly getting a rapid start doesn't mean automatic victory, and given the huge risk to our top batsmen that comes with such an approach, it probably is only advisable under certain conditions.
Starting slowly is hardly something that has just been introduced, nor is it something that the coach has suddenly instilled. There were plenty of matches under Bracewell where we got a slow start. Just off the top of my head, there is all 5 away ODI's against England, all 3 away ODI's against Bangladesh, the 3 away ODI's against SA, pretty much all of the WC etc..., so generally pretty much everytime we're either not batting on a road or chasing 330. Instead, it depends on who's batting at the start of the innings, and what frame of mind they're in. In the case of recent times, for the most part McCullum has batted alongside relatively defensive and inexperienced players, such as How, Fulton and Guptill. Not to say they can't bat aggressively, as we saw from the later two the other night.
