Sport Today

From the NZPA via Stuff:

Discarded England pace bowler Andrew Caddick has added spice to the third
one-day cricket international here tomorrow by rating his team a better man
for man unit than New Zealand.

England go into the day-night match at McLean Park battling to keep pace
with New Zealand in all three disciplines of the game after the 155-run loss
in Wellington last Saturday which saw them go 0-2 down in the five-match
series.

A confident New Zealand side are looking to finish off the series on a pacy
pitch here then look to a repeat of their 5-0 whitewash of the West Indies
at home two years ago.

Caddick, who was dropped for the second match after a pedestrian start to
the tour, is unlikely to play again tomorrow as the English selectors favour
Yorkshire's Matthew Hoggard.

While New Zealand had their moments in Christchurch and were helped by a
limp England batting collapse, the flat tourists had no answer to the home
side in Wellington.

It was difficult to see them recovering but the noises from the England camp
suggest they will respond to a familiar position.

"We are a funny side who seem to have made a career out of starting slowly
and coming back . . . it means that we can come back at New Zealand,"
Caddick wrote in his newspaper column.

"On paper, player for player, we are a better side. We have better
individual players. We have allowed them to beat us."

It was an interesting assessment but one which will be tested tomorrow as
England have their last chance to get back on track.

Marcus Trescothick should take the wicketkeeping gloves again and is under
pressure to perform with the bat after dual failures. He topped the averages
in India when England recovered to square the recent series 3-3.

Allrounders Paul Collingwood and Craig White also need to match the deeds of
their New Zealand counterparts Andre Adams and Chris Cairns, with Adams the
star of the series so far.

Trescothick yesterday said there was no panic in the England side, only
mystery as to why they had started the series so slowly.

One suggestion was they were enjoying the comforts of New Zealand too much
after three consecutive subcontinent tours. It was something Trescothick
didn't rule out.

"It's something we're trying to work out ourselves. It was a hectic tour of
India, everything was a lot different to what we've seen here," he said.

New Zealand had a two-hour training session in the Napier sun yesterday
while England went for the same time but concentrated mainly on fielding.

Dropped catches, missed run outs and slow chasing have made them look far
inferior to their opponents.

One of the Black Caps' best, Lou Vincent, was surprised at England's efforts
on Saturday but said his team were wary of writing them off.

"They're definitely a way better team than that, and I wouldn't be
surprised, being a desperate game for them, that they'll come out and apply
themselves a lot more," Vincent said.

"We're stoked with the way we're playing, and once you're on a winning roll
you don't want to stop it. It feels good, and we're definitely keen to knock
it over on Wednesday."

While the pressure has gone on England captain Nasser Hussain and coach
Duncan Fletcher to lift their side, New Zealand coach Denis Aberhart had
little motivational work to do.

He labelled Saturday's victory as one of the team's most satisfying in his
time in charge. With such an experienced core of players he was needing to
have little motivational input.

"In Wellington the guys came out and put the gameplan into place for pretty
much the entire game.

"The players know pretty well what's expected of them. They're experienced,
they know what their role is and they know when a wicket falls they need to
establish another partnership."

Aberhart wouldn't confirm whether speedster Ian Butler, 20, would play here,
but it seems likely he will replace batsman Brendon McCullum at a ground
renowned for its pacy pitch.

Teams:

New Zealand (from): Stephen Fleming (captain), Nathan Astle, Chris Nevin,
Brendon McCullum, Craig McMillan, Chris Cairns, Lou Vincent, Chris Harris,
Andre Adams, Daniel Vettori, Daryl Tuffey, Ian Butler.

England (from): Nasser Hussain (captain), Marcus Trescothick, Nick Knight,
Graham Thorpe, Michael Vaughan, Owais Shah, Paul Collingwood, Andrew
Flintoff, Craig White, Ben Hollioake, Ashley Giles, Matthew Hoggard, Darren
Gough, James Foster, Andrew Caddick, Jeremy Snape.

Their rugby team has been classic at it for decades. It will be
interesting to see how they deal with actually being half way decent
for a bit.

...tom

...tom

I believe Caddick's column is published in the Independent on Sunday.

Whatever the relative merits of the individual players of both sides, the
match-up is much closer than we have seen in the two matches played.

It was a meaningless throw-away comment probably written by a ghost anyway.
Bound to attract a bit of derision at a time when most of the team are
under-performing, but not worth getting e***d about when compared with
Caddick's comments re. not wanting to tour India before Christmas.  He's not
exactly in danger of getting a job at the United Nations once his days in
cricket are finished.

Now something which *was* really funny: the reporting of Caddick's comments
prompted Lynn McConnell of CricInfo to publish a long and detailed analysis
in which he paired off the players of each side and compared them
head-to-head.  I got as far as the first match-up, in which we were told
that Chris Nevin is as good a player as Marcus Trescothick, before giving
up.  Chips on that shoulder? I'd like tomato sauce with mine, thanks.

Andrew

Cheers,

Shishir

As for the relative truth or otherwise behind Caddick's comments,
England do seem always to have had a history of looking good on paper
individually but not delivering as a team.  I would have said of late
this is the first time the reverse has been true - to me the England
side that toured India felt as weak as any I had ever seen but
delivered rather better results than I had hoped for.

But, by the same token, it has to be said that New Zealand, on paper
do not look very convincing but I think their performance shows
clearly they can and do compete with the best.

Simon

But what got me interested was this feeling that the team was "weak".

Did you really feel the side was weak, or were you just not confident
that they would do well because there weren't many players with a good
Test track record?

To me, the only definite weak link in the party was Ormond, of whom I
entertain no expectations for a future career because I think he's a
good county bowler and will never be anything more than that. But I
was confident in the ability of the other players: the question in my
mind was how well they would cope. I didn't have any doubts about
Hoggard, though, and said so - it was about the only firm prediction I
made before the series that Hoggard would do well, and got a load of
flak from Sadiq for my pains.

I was not confident that the side would do well, which is one
definition of "weak", but I always felt that we'd run India close
because I thought we had a party of basically good players, and if
they could all get it together, good enough to cause an upset. I
didn't think it was weak in the same way as when we fielded an attack
of Cork, Ilott, Martin and Illingworth with Gallian in the middle
order, when we were picking several players who were simply not of the
required class and never would be.

Cheers,

Mike

In recent times I have come to look at Atherton, Stewart and Thorpe as
the proven batsmen and Gough and Caddick as the bowling.  Now for the
Indian series were doing without all of them (albeit Thorpe was on
tour but often unavailable).  When a team is considered to be a weak
international side, as England (rightly or wrongly) is, removing all
of whom I considered to be the best players was certainly not going to
help our cause, although at least we did have the benefit of Nasser as
captain, unlike the Ashes series.

Simon

www.cricket.org/link_to_database/ARCHIVE/CRICKET_NEWS/2002/FEB/099448...
EB2002.html

Andrew

McConnell's judgement appears to be based on balancing out Trescothick's
superior batting with the gem that Nevin is a "full-time wicket-keeper".
Whilst I don't rate Trescothick's keeping very highly, I'd hate to see what
Nevin's glovework was like if he only did it part-time.

<snip>

Andrew