Long-time flaws exposed in New Zealand's campaign
Stephen Fleming and Shane Bond: New Zealand's two success stories of the tournament A World Cup record low score against Australia did nothing to harden New Zealand's batting resolve in their last-chance Super Six match with India
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Stephen Fleming and Shane Bond: New Zealand's two success stories of the tournament |
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At a time when it might normally have been expected that circumstances demanded extra vigilance, New Zealand collectively showed the attention span of an American diplomat listening to opponents of their plans for Iraq.
The result was just as explosive as far as New Zealand was concerned.
This collective failing was an unmitigated disaster which sadly has been all too symptomatic of New Zealand's preparation for this tournament.
New Zealand's effort lacked for basic intelligence at times. Surely the situation for the New Zealanders attempting to come back from their record-low effort in the Australian match demanded that at least a look be taken at the bowling before launching into shots.
Craig McMillan went into the match with the selection chairman Sir Richard Hadlee stating that McMillan had been asked to take more time in establishing his innings. A second-ball dismissal did nothing to suggest the request had registered.
That preparation for South Africa started after the last tour of England in 1999, where New Zealand had made the semi-finals.
It was apparent even then that New Zealand needed to establish an opening partnership.
Nothing has worked.
The situation got so bad that Craig McMillan and Daniel Vettori were press-ganged into opening during this tournament. Yet Mathew Sinclair was never given a chance.
Has there been a clearer admittance of failure in New Zealand's one-day history?
The whole campaign has smacked of an ad hoc policy in regard to the vital opening role. Opening the batting is the most crucial area of influence in the one-day game. That is why Australia have Matthew Hayden and Adam Gilchrist, why India have Sachin Tendulkar and Virender Sehwag and Sri Lanka have Sanath Jayarsuriya.
The opening game which saw McMillan opening, Lou Vincent 'keeping and Nathan Astle at No 3 for the first time this summer, seemed a strange place to be trying something so radical. That's not to forget the decision not to play Daniel Vettori.
This was more worrying given the job confronting New Zealand in their pool which demanded they win as many games as possible, knowing they were going to lose four points to Kenya.
Stephen Fleming addressed the shortcomings of his game to be the dominant batsman in the side in South Africa, and all credit to him for doing that.
But why was it necessary to "protect" Astle by having a makeshift opener in McMillan fill a role where Astle had developed into an opener regarded as one of the world's leading one-day batsmen? What suddenly changed?
And if there was a compelling reason, why was it not tried in New Zealand beforehand?
Against the West Indies and South Africa, New Zealand seemed to get it right. They were under pressure and responded. It was a team batting performance in the West Indies game, and the superb effort of Stephen Fleming in the South African match, that spelled the difference.
McMillan did score 75 against Bangladesh, but the opposition had to be put into context while Astle paced himself well to a century against Zimbabwe.
But the fact of the matter is that the only two players who scored anything like the number of runs New Zealand needed during the tournament were Fleming and Scott Styris, who achieved his century in the first round loss to Sri Lanka.
Chris Cairns never produced when it was required. His scoreline read: 32, 37, 33no, 31, 54, 16 and 20 - hardly the sort of return that could be expected of a player of his stature.
What was most infuriating about his return was the number of times he got himself out to soft options. It was typified by his dismissal to Harbhajan Singh against India and that against Andy Bichel in the earlier match against Australia.
Cairns also had an unfortunate tendency to be quoted before the last two matches especially about what was possibly going to happen.
The words were not matched by actions and, quite frankly, they were embarrassing.
That word probably best sums up New Zealand's campaign, embarrassing.
The claims before the Australian game that McMillan was being dropped because he was out of form came back to haunt chairman Sir Richard Hadlee, and the team, when Lou Vincent's inability to produce the form expected of him at the World Cup, required McMillan to be tried again against India.
He lasted two balls.
That's embarrassing.
Too often in the early stages of the tournament, New Zealand's bowling was indisciplined with wides and no-balls too prevalent.
These are fundamental requirements that should have been ingrained into players long before they landed on South African soil.
Shane Bond was outstanding. He was one of the tournament's personalities and a rare asset. The quality of the batsmen he removed at the top of the order was testimony to his touch.
But in reviewing the bowling options New Zealand again had a fatal flaw as bad as that which has developed over the opening batting position - their bowling at the death.
New Zealand consistently have failed to bowl sides out. It is not a new problem and even the player selected with the idea of bowling at the death, Andre Adams, was rarely in a position where his skills could be put to the test.
And that was because he was suddenly drafted into being an opening bowler. That was surely the role for which Daryl Tuffey and Kyle Mills were selected. The haste with which Tuffey was discarded after the first game was embarrassing, a point he at least reacted to by bowling 10 overs in the final game against India for 41 runs, a more than reasonable effort given the 12 runs taken in the three balls before he dismissed Tendulkar.
It says something too, that for all the pre-series talk about pitches with pace and bounce from which New Zealand's big men, Tuffey, Mills and Jacob Oram would benefit, the opposite was more the case. Matches were more like those from New Zealand in the early 1990s which allowed Chris Harris to revive a career that looked to be on the ropes.
Having at least had the good sense to have selected him was one thing in the selectors' favour in the final outcome of it all.
Upon reflection it was probably New Zealand's worst World Cup since 1987. At least when the 1996 campaign foundered in the quarter-final stages, the side went down fighting with an outstanding effort against Australia.
Similar qualities were far from evident in the capitulations to Australia and India at the business end of this tournament.
Still, in Bond, Styris, Oram, Vincent (when his role is finally decided upon), Vettori, Adams, McCullum, Mills, Tuffey there is a core around which a side can start to be developed with the West Indies in 2007 in mind.
Whether McMillan is part of that will depend on how he responds to the clear problems he has had this summer, a similar situation for Sinclair, while longevity of service and avoiding the ravages of time will determine the fates of Fleming, Cairns, Harris and Astle.
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