*Official* New Zealand in Zimbabwe 2025 (Tests)

[LangleyburyCCPlayer]

They're touring England next year and the opportunity to play a couple of fc games at Lords was too good to miss. Also the standard of opponent in d2 CC is probably higher.

Outside of Muzarabani, the bowling definitely is

 

[Bahnz]

Some more photos from today View attachment 49006

Looks like a wonderful day at the cricket! I went to Bulawayo once for this game: ZIM vs NZ Cricket Scorecard, 2nd Test at Bulawayo, September 25 - 29, 1997

The match was pretty tedious for the first 4 days, and only sprang to life after we went back to Harare on day 5. My main memory is playing cricket behind the scoreboard with other kids I met at the ground. I also remember staying at the Bulawayo Club, which was like taking a timewarp back to the 1890's.

 

[thierry henry]

BTW. the 3rd umpire position in this match with no ball-tracking, and no snicko, no hot-spot, must be the sweetest gig ever in the history of paid employment.

I dunno. During Uni I was employed part time as a "data matching officer". My employer had a database of probably hundreds of thousands of "clients" they had interacted with and my job was to match up duplicate clients in the database. So basically, my entire job was to click on the matching clients and then click on "merge".

What made it really ridiculous was the job was entirely reactive. I wasn't even looking for data to match, my role was entirely restricted to responding to emails from other employees saying "please merge X and Y". I worked one day a week during the Uni term, each week I would come in to maybe 5 requests on average. During holidays I worked full time, for an average 8 hour day of work the "work" was literally 3 mouse clicks.

 

[Skyliner]

Shades of Severance.

 

[CricAddict]

They're touring England next year and the opportunity to play a couple of fc games at Lords was too good to miss. Also the standard of opponent in d2 CC is probably higher.

It is nice to think of it this way. But it may also be about money since he is not contracted to nzc right now.

 

[Skyliner]

Kanes wife is from England and they have young kids. Plenty of reasons for him to be over there I guess. He could have just jacked international cricket in and focused on family life, but he's trying to make it all work so he can keep playing the really important matches. Sounds like he intends to be available for the big test series' ahead, going off of what RW has said. He missed the India series with injury and other players stepped up in his absence, which is a positive. I'd rather have him in our line-up for Lords and the MCG next year than not have him.

 

[CricAddict]

Kanes wife is from England and they have young kids. Plenty of reasons for him to be over there I guess. He could have just jacked international cricket in and focused on family life, but he's trying to make it all work so he can keep playing the really important matches. Sounds like he intends to be available for the big series' test ahead, going off of what RW has said. He missed the India series with injury and other players stepped up in his absence, which is a positive. I'd rather have him in our line-up for Lords and the MCG next year than not have him.

Agree to all that. But he has a chance to break records and become an all time legend and that can only happen if he plays all tests. Skipping the t20s and odis are fine but skipping tests can ruin legacy.

 

[Bahnz]

Agree to all that. But he has a chance to break records and become an all time legend and that can only happen if he plays all tests. Skipping the t20s and odis are fine but skipping tests can ruin legacy.

He doesn't really have a chance to break records does he? He basically already has all the significant NZ records ( most runs, most hundreds - I guess he still has the most tests record to pick up, but a) who cares; and b) if he stays fit he'll have comfortably claimed that by the completion of next year's Aus tour). Yeah this will make crossing 10,000 runs harder, but he should still have plenty of time to do that as well, unless his form drops off a cliff.

As for being an all time legend, he's number 11 all time for 100's and number 16 for runs scored. At this point he either is or isn't one already, depending on your opinion, and I don't think playing a couple extra tests against Zim will make a difference to that either way.

 

[Daemon]

He’s worried about his away record deteriorating further obviously

 

[ataraxia]

He's selflessly keeping his test record free of minnow-bashing to curry the favour of the denizens of CW, obviously.

 

[thierry henry]

Yeah every test he refuses to play in Zimbabwe is pretty much the equivalent of him scoring a century in India tbh. By the end of this series he will retrospectively be crowned man of the series for The Whitewash.

 

[_Ed_]

I was thinking this might be a rare day for Will Young to fill his boots in tests. So much for that idea.

 

[Prince EWS]

I was thinking this might be a rare day for Will Young to fill his boots in tests. So much for that idea.

Given Young often gets himself out domestically, the lower standard of bowling was unlikely to change that much in the end.

Good ball anyway tbf.

 

[NZTailender]

Gdi Young


That said, the pitch is doing a bit

 

[Athlai]

Nicholls about to have more Test runs than Turner

 

[_Ed_]

Nicholls about to have more Test runs than Turner

Pretty damn good career tbf, even if most of us think this part of it shouldn't be happening.

 

[Athlai]

Congrats on 3000 Nicholls.

 

[Chubb]

Nicholls should have been out 4 times before that.

 

[NZTailender]

Tragically falls just short of the double by 166 runs.

 

[ataraxia]

Nicholls keeps finding new ways to get out cramped on the cut.