Black Caps hit back in best way (30 July 1999)

30 July 1999

Black Caps hit back in best way

The Christchurch Press

Travelling with the New Zealand cricket team must be like buying a season ticket on the switchback railway at Bournemouth.

The scenery might be slightly different, but the motions are much the same.

The highs are heady, but you know the lows are due again any moment. Or am I being unfair?

This particular team has hit a high and the historical cycle might be in for a bit of an elongation before the low comes back to belt us.

It is of course a source of immense satisfaction to be able to win cricket tests anywhere, let alone in front of a sea of sherry-soaked MCC ties at the spiritual seat of cricket.

There won't have been many at Lord's who would have bet their membership on the erratic Black Caps this time round.

Least of all the popular sporting press who, it has to be said, will at this moment be keeping a somewhat lower profile than the Black Caps themselves were said to have generated on this tour of Britain.

There can have been no more satisfying experience for the New Zealand cricketers after their marvellous win over England at Lords than watching the spectacle of the British sporting press dabbing at the omelette plastered all over its face.

Before the World Cup it was said that this particular Kiwi team was the sporting box office equivalent of John Major; a guarantee of a good day's slumber if you really felt you had to go along.

Until the last moments of the World Cup this imagery was sustained in the British media.

The catch-cry became woundingly familiar. Here come those tedious nowhere-men again to give the reputation of one-day cricket for high drama another slow, underarm delivery.

As it turned out the Black Caps generated more than enough drama in their staccato progress through to the semi-finals. It was the upswing of the cycle. We could see that but nobody else could.

This was an aberration, the British media reassured itself, having failed, inexplicably, to turn its venom on the England team that appeared to prefer an early holiday at the beach to staying in the competition beyond the first stage.

Nobody had the slightest doubt that, come five-day test time, England would return these charisma-free upstarts to the bottom of the heap and then some. And they did.

The first test was a classic exhibition of the difficult art of throwing away an advantage. Everything seemed to be going along nicely, then clunk, off came the wheels.

We have seen it so many times before as to instantly recognise it. Like the arrival of a cold front in Wellington, this was the downward swing in the cycle.

Normality was restored. The second test at Lord's would be the time for the England team to administer a jolly good thrashing to dispel any lingering doubts about the pecking order.

But what they forgot was the immutable law of New Zealand cricket: the more abject the performance one day, the greater the guarantee it will be spectacular the next.

And so it has turned out. As long as you can accommodate your emotions to the roller-coaster factor it can be quite good fun following the Black Caps.

If you can read the signs early enough it should even be possible to turn it into gold at the TAB.

Source :: The Christchurch Press (https://www.press.co.nz/)