*Official * Pakistan vs New Zealand 2023

[Nintendo]

Agreed. The guy's only played 8 ODI's, and I've yet to see him display the toolset to suggest he wouldn't be a liability in the death overs.

That was basically Henry a few years ago, southee aint great at the death and your best backup in Shipley has struggled there thus far tbf. Not just a Jamieson problem.

 

[_Ed_]

That's probably fair, although Henry had at least shown some early glimpses of real quality as a white-ball bowler - he ran through the Indian top order with 4-38 on his ODI debut, for instance. Haven't quite seen that from Jamieson yet.

 

[Bahnz]

Yeah, Henry was just an outstanding white ball bowler from the start, with notable performances against India and Australia early in his career. Yeah teams learned to target him at the death, but even at his most vulnerable he was still taking enough new ball wickets to average 25ish.

Jamieson hasn't really achieved that - admittedly mainly due to a lack of opportunities. Even amongst his 8 games, 3 were v the Netherlands and 3 v Bangladesh at home. But his domestic white ball record and abysmal T20 numbers tend to suggest that the issues are a bit more significant than mid-career Henry's were.

 

[thierry henry]

I wanted to say that y’all are being too harsh on Neesham because he’s hardly had the chance to play ODIs (his best format imo despite being a T20 mercenary) since gunning it in 2018/19 and the 2019 World Cup.

However, his record in the 14 ODIs he has played since then is abysmal, and his record over his last 30 or so T20Is is also poor. So yeah, he’s probably done enough to be dropped tbh

 

[thierry henry]

Southee btw has taken 20 wickets @23 in his last 11 games. Prior to that he did not play an ODI for over 2 years.

I have no idea what the justification was for picking him again last year but those results do lend themselves worryingly to Athlai’s theory

 

[Athlai]

Yes.

 

[Moss]

Blundell is just relentlessly crap at this format for whatever reason. Even after his clear improvement as an overall batsman he averaged 23 in six games for Wellington this season.

Agreed, and Cleaver or maybe Fletcher should have been trialled ahead of him. Would still want a proper backup keeper in the squad though, Conway/Allen in T20s itself is not without risk (thinking back to Conway dropping Babar first ball in the T20 WC semifinal), let alone this format.

 

[SteveNZ]

Blundell is one of those players who you shouldn't give a **** about his domestic record. He is a bonafide gun who has the game and the temperament to do very well in international cricket. Much better back-up option than Fletcher and certainly better than Cleaveer.

 

[straw man]

The other thing is that the poor old Ford Trophy is the unloved cousin of the domestic season, fits in around other fixtures and doesn't get a lot of focus, so I take any numbers from it with a large grain of salt. It's thrown up some real oddities like Jack Boyle being one of the top averages for a couple of seasons.

If I'm wondering if some NZ domestic player might have ODI potential then I would look just as much as FC and Super Smash #stats as List A. That's partly also the nature of ODIs being an inbetween format - a good FC record suggests batting chops or ability to take wickets, while a good Super Smash record suggests good at hitting or containment bowling, all of which is relevant to ODIs.

Summary: Ford Trophy records don't mean ****.

 

[SteveNZ]

Yeah, agreed. It's shoehorned in these days, it is a far cry from the Shell Cup. Played historically on flat as hell wickets, I remember that was what opened eyes about Matt Henry - I was at a game at Colin Maiden where he was bouncing and hurrying up Tim McIntosh at the time he was the Test opener, and people thought 'who is this kid?' So for someone to be promoted from there, they'd have to be doing something pretty special.

Like, you know, scoring a match winning unbeaten hundred off 80 balls and taking 3-for in a final...