Sideline Slogger

Paul Holden's blog echoes the spirit of his beloved Beige Brigade, a patriotic cult that's become a Kiwi bastion of things brown, beige, tongue-in-cheek and tenuously cricket-related.

Guest post: The Economist's Test Team of the Decade

10:52am 15 Jan 2010

65 comments

The Economist, a calculator- and Excel-toting regular viewer and commenter on Sideline Slogger, has taken on the onerous task of selecting his New Zealand teams of the decade from 2000-2009.

The culmination of his tri-series is today as he selects the Noughties Test XI. Note that he starts with a default XI then tweaks based on his own subjective assessment of the players and the overall team.

With the test team, I'll take the top six run scorers, the top four wicket takers, and the top wicketkeeper. If there are any duplications, I'll alternately add the next best wicket-taker or run-scorer until I've got an eleven. Twelfth man is the guy to have played the most matches without making the XI (he must have been okay to have played so many matches, surely?!). The "default" test XI is:

Mark Richardson 2776 runs at an average of 45, 1 wicket at an average of 21

Stephen Fleming (c) 4188 runs @41

Guest post: The Economist's ODI Team of the Decade

01:01pm 13 Jan 2010

29 comments

The Economist, a calculator- and Excel-toting regular viewer and commenter on Sideline Slogger, has taken on the onerous task of selecting his New Zealand teams of the decade from 2000-2009. We'll build up to the Test XI on Friday, but here is his second effort, zeroing in on the original pyjama format: one-day cricket. Note that he starts with a default XI then tweaks based on his own subjective assessment of the players and the overall team.

The default ODI XI is:

Nathan Astle 4009 runs at an average of 36, 35 wickets at an average of 47

Stephen Fleming (c) 4876 runs @33

Lou Vincent 2413 runs @27, 1 wicket @ 25

Ad Feedback

Guest post: The Economist's T20 Team of the Decade

11:09am 05 Jan 2010

23 comments

The Economist, a calculator- and Excel-toting regular viewer and commenter on Sideline Slogger, has taken on the onerous task of selecting his New Zealand teams of the decade from 2000-2009. We'll build up to the Test XI later in the week, but here is his first effort, zeroing in on the least loved format for any genuine cricket tragic: Twenty20. Note that he starts with a default XI then tweaks based on his own subjective assessment of the players and the overall team.

Given that the only thing in NZ we'll be subjected to is some T20 dross masquerading as cricket, here are my NZ teams of the 2000s across all three formats (ignoring the fact that technically the decade doesn't end for another year - I read a great quote the other day where someone pointed out you'd never say that 1990 was part of the 1980s!).

As some background, my starting point in selecting each team is to look at sheer quantity of contribution - runs, wickets, and catches/stumpings. For the T20 team, the starting point is five run-scorers and five wicket-takers (and a keeper of course), then adding run-scorers before wicket-takers if extra players are necessary to reach eleven. Twelfth man is the guy to have played the most matches without making the XI.

The default T20 XI is (showing strike rates and RPOs rather than averages):

Jesse Ryder (231 runs @ strike rate of 133, 2 wickets @ 6.8 runs per over)

Ad Feedback

Noughties NZ best

03:02pm 24 Dec 2009

6 comments

Across all international cricket - and by that I mean Test matches, ODIs and Twenty20s - the New Zealand team has had a pretty standard decade by their standards.

Our combined effort of played 349 [W 148, L 159, T 3, D 25, NR 14] delivers a 0.93 ratio of wins to losses and puts us in 7th of all the cricket-playing countries and only ahead of the West Indies (0.63), Zimbabwe (0.32) and Bangladesh (0.31). Australia led the pack with a win/loss ratio of 3.03, miles ahead of South Africa (1.80) and Sri Lanka (1.41).

Back in the much maligned 1990s, New Zealand was also 7th but only ahead of England in that decade. Our win/loss ratio was much lower at 0.65 from 272 matches.

And in the much foamed about decade from 1980-1989 we played almost half as many matches as we have in the Noughties, and from these 185 matches ended up with a win/loss ratio of 0.90 - in 6th place but ahead of only Sri Lanka.

BATTING

Double whammy cricket monster?

10:46am 16 Dec 2009

41 comments

When the Indian Cricket League emerged as an unsanctioned competition, there was gnashing of teeth, frothing at the mouth, voodoo dolls at the ready and an almighty hue and cry from cricket administrators screaming about the dangerous monster that is cricket that has not been endorsed by the BCCI and the ICC.

At the time, back in August 2007, the ICL was heavily criticised as an agent attacking the fabric of cricket, and its financial lures were derided as blood money only to be taken by international cricket's player mercenaries.

NZC boss Justin Vaughan was quoted as saying: "Events such as the ICL could have the potential to compete with official international events and erode their value. Added to this, the proposed rebel league is scheduled to directly conflict with the [New Zealand] tour to South Africa as well as the start of our domestic season."

How ironic, then, that it was never the shambolic ICL that threatened the weave of the game. As NZ Cricket Players' Association boss Heath Mills predicted at the time, it was always the "official" BCCI-endorsed Indian Premier League behemoth that had the most potential to disrupt the primacy of international cricket.

It is the IPL and its ilk that are now competing with official international events and threatening to erode value. If the reports in the Sunday Star-Times are to be believed, the Indian domestic tournament and its clones, little brothers, and off-shoots are most likely to lure the players away from the black cap - and these players and the international cricket that they play are the geese that lay NZC's golden eggs.

<< Previous Page Next Page >>

Blog terms and conditions

You're welcome to post in the comments section of our blogs. Please keep comments under 400 words. When submitting a comment, you agree to be bound by our terms and conditions.

Blog sections:

Slideshow Entertainment

Slideshow Life & Style

Slideshow Travel

Sport Headlines

RSS