'Need to breath life into our Test cricket'

Mark Richardson, the former New Zealand player, writes in the New Zealand Herald that the team should be making most of their advantage and conditions at home, if they are to stake a claim as one of the powerhouses in Test cricket.

Things could have been different in Wellington had we been playing Australia or South Africa with their expert bowling - but we don't beat them in flat conditions, so why not take our chances in a bit of a lottery? However, when it's Sri Lanka, or Pakistan, or the West Indies, I'd say the odds are in our favour when there's life in the pitch. These are the teams we must send packing if we are to climb up the rankings and stay there. I'm not talking about minefields here either, because the Basin Reserve pitch was far from that; I'm just talking about life.