Posted by After 18 home series victories in a row, India have been beaten by New Zealand. The tourists achieved this seemingly-impossible feat exactly how you’d imagine – by plopping cricketers who haven’t really been playing much into their team and asking them to immediately decimate India’s batting line-up.
If you’re not aware of the background to this series from the New Zealand perspective, they’d just toured Sri Lanka, playing two Tests and losing both. In the second one they were bowled out for 88 on a pitch where they’d just conceded 602-5.
“Well, pretty hard to improve on that as preparation for a Test series against India,” they concluded and so went into this series without any warm-up games.
Perhaps concerned that some of their players might nevertheless be overcooked after playing Test cricket three weeks earlier, they picked Matt Henry, who hadn’t featured in Sri Lanka, for the first Test. He responded by taking 5-15 as India were bowled out for 46.
“Say, this ‘picking people who haven’t been playing’ thing seems to work quite well,” concluded the Kiwis and duly dropped Henry for the second Test. They replaced him with Mitchell Santner, who was on a bit of a hot streak after taking one wicket for 197 runs in Sri Lanka and who had caught the eye with some seriously proficient drinks-carrying during the first Test.
Santner took 7-53 in the first innings and 6-104 in the second and India’s proud home record was gone before the third and final Test had even begun.
So who’s going to be the key player in Mumbai on Friday? Ish Sodhi hasn’t played a Test in almost two years, so he must be worth watching. However, our money’s on Jacob Duffy on the basis he’s never played one at all.
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In other news, some bloke named Ian Harris is all over the ECB’s website and social media:
https://www.ecb.co.uk/news/4158912/nearly-1m-benefit-from-allweather-pitches-and-facilities-improvements
Quite the feat, that, when you think about just how many pitches that is. He sounds a decent sort. It’s an ongoing source of lamentation for us that we never seem able to draw the the attention of such luminaries to this website. It feels like a personal failing.
Heck, that sort of bloke must be so darned busy.
You’d think.
Once again, a happy Samhain to Sam Hain (and others)
Looks like South Africa are heading towards their greatest test victory by an innings-and-summat runs with Bangladesh facing their greatest test loss by and innings-and-summat runs. Both at the same time.
Bangladesh kind of deserve it for setting Afghanistan 662 to win last year, even though they’d bowled them out for 146 in the first innings.
Yup. What goes around comes around.
As it turned out it was Bangladesh’s second greatest test loss while SA did indeed record their greatest test victory by an innings-and-summat runs. Ooh, spoiler alert by the way.
Salt & Jacks opening the batting for England.
Any other partnerships which sound like a savoury snack? Derek Pringle has got to be involved somewhere.
I’d say that was the most seafaring opening combo ever.
“All at sea” puns wecome.
Seafarers XI
Jason Galleon (c)
Phil Salt
Will Jacks
Peter Barge
Alvin Catamaran
Rishabh Punt (w)
Ian Boatham
Lance Cruisener
Johan Boatha
Waqar U-Boat
Sailor Young (yes, really)
12th Man: Fredalo Flintoff
Turns out it was Ajaz, surely the only player to take 10 wickets in an innings and be dropped for the next Test.