Best option would be to drop a bowler for Sinclair

BY JONATHAN MILLMOW

OPINION: New Zealand has too many bowlers and not enough batsmen.

Of course, it wouldn't make a blind bit of difference to the result at the Basin Reserve but it might have created sterner opposition.

For the next test Mathew Sinclair must come in at No6 at the expense of a bowler – probably Daryl Tuffey – to extend the batting and give the captain a rest.

In the first innings Daniel Vettori was padded up within 50 minutes of captaining his struggling troops and bowling 33 overs.

When New Zealand collapses his workload is unsustainable and can't possibly be persevered with in Hamilton on Saturday.

Besides that a tail of Daryl Tuffey, Tim Southee, Brent Arnel and Chris Martin is long and weak – seven out all out, one could say.

The argument is you lack for overs by dropping a bowler but as the Basin has showed, New Zealand will probably only have to bowl once in these tests.

In a perfect world James Franklin would score valuable runs and bowl a dozen tidy overs at No6 but he has mislaid his game, another failure with the bat at the weekend for Wellington testament to that.

Teeanger Kane Williamson is the exciting option but the selectors keep knocking that idea on the head. He bowls serviceable offspin on top of having a rap on him as big as anyone since Martin Crowe.

The critics will call for Peter Ingram's head today on the back of a double failure but he was run out through no fault of his own in the first innings and fell early in the second.

Having stuck with Ingram to this point, the selectors can be expected to go around the block once more with a batsman who batted close to an hour in the first innings without looking unduly troubled.

Possibly the player in the gun till his fighting knock yesterday was Tim McIntosh.

He is proving a chronically bad runner between wickets, having been involved in three runouts in the second innings against Bangladesh before selling Ingram down the river at the Basin.

Still, any man in a black helmet who can bat near five hours against Australia can sleep easy at these times.

Expect minimal changes when the side is re-selected at the conclusion of the test; in fact, the same 13 (Sinclair and Jeetan Patel) will probably head to Hamilton.

Losses at home inside four days are a humiliation so New Zealand will have to pull something out of the bag today if they are to avoid that circumstance.

Certainly a repeat of their first innings capitulation won't be tolerated by their followers.

New Zealand lost 6-49 in 65 minutes against an Australian attack that has a relentless intensity to it but only one true class act (Mitchell Johnson), whose only wicket was the last one in dubious circumstances.

- © Fairfax NZ News