Living up to early promise

This is my first post for From the Couch. I am an absolute sports tragic and especially love the quirky, statistical side of sport. I am also a huge admirer of Tim Southee, so my first post is dedicated to him.

Imagine your test cricket debut. Desperate to do well, you want to prove you belong in the arena. For a bowler a five wicket innings is trumped only by a 10 wicket match haul. And as a specialist bowler you might strive your whole career to score a test match fifty. Tim Southee did both on test debut, 5-55 in England's first innings and then a six laden 77* in the futile chase for 553 to win.

I do go on, but it really is a big deal. Only 8 players in test history have done the "50 & five-for" double on debut. The interesting thing is that ever since that debut Tim Southee has never scored as many or had bowling figures as good. His debut performances remain his best in his 16 test career. So what about the others, who else never reached the dizzying heights of their test debut?

The table below shows all the players who have done the 50 and five for double on debut. The last two columns show the matches taken until they bettered their debut performance.

Four players (Trott, Lever, Dodemaide and Southee) never bettered their debut performance in either discipline. John Lever had the longest career without ever bettering his debut effort ( 21 tests) but our boy Tim is closing in - 16 tests to date.

Wally Hammond, one of the greatest batsmen of all time, took only until his third test to better his debut 51 but never again took a test match five-for in his 85 match career.

All of the others in the list did better their debut performances at some point in their career, in some cases very soon after their debut.

Surely the question is not if, but when, Tim Southee will go on to better his debut performance with either bat or ball. What price he does it against Zimbabwe some time over the weekend?

Player	Debut	HS	BBI	Total career	Bettered
					High Score	Best bowling
AE Trott (Aus)	1895	72*	8 for 43	8 matches	never	never
LC Braund (Eng)	1901	58	5 for 61	24 matches	3rd match	14th match
FR Foster (Eng)	1911	56	5 for 92	11 matches	3rd match	2nd match
WR Hammond (Eng)	1927	51	5 for 36	85 matches	3rd match	never
BR Taylor (NZ)	1965	105	5 for 86	30 matches	13th match	2nd match
JK Lever (Eng)	1976	53	7 for 46	21 matches	never	never
AIC Dodemaide (Aus)	1987	50	6 for 58	10 matches	never	never
TG Southee (NZ)	2008	77*	5 for 55	16 matches	never	never

Also, big shout out to Bruce Taylor - the Kiwi all-rounder who appears in the list as the only player in test history to score a century and take five wickets in an innings on test debut. Kudos.

The Black Cap XI - today, tomorrow and three years time.

Victory in Australia is great but unfortunately it probably didn't answer any of the questions we have about our top XI, oddly enough it probably threw up a few more.

We did learn a couple of things though that we can bank for the years ahead.

1) Between Doug Bracewell, Tim Southee and Trent Boult we have quick bowlers that can win us test matches for the next six or seven years. Behind them sit a group including Neil Wagner (come April), Hamish Bennett and Adam Milne. That group can win us test matches.

2) Chris Martin can still lead this attack. Martin was outstanding this whole series, making Phil Hughes his bunny was memorable but I could make Phil Hughes my bunny by bowling underarm if I was taking the ball across him. The way he lead a group of youngsters and kept showing up was testament to what experience and heart can achieve. Sure he may only have a year or two left (terrorising A Strauss and A Cook next summer in NZ might be a nice finish to the careeer) but in that time the group of bowlers I discussed in point 1 will learn a lot from Tommy!

3) Dean Brownlie is a middle order rock that you can build a batting line-up around.

There are also things we already knew

1) Ross Taylor is world class.

But what are the questions?

1) Is Kane Williamson a #3.... yet? Kane Williamson will be a world-class cricketer and will earn that reputation as a #3 but I am not convinced he is there yet. The best #3 of my lifetime is Ponting (well maybe Dravid but it being Ponting suits my argument) spent the early years of his career at 6 where he learned how to be a test batsman. Everyone knew he would always be a 3 but they gave him time to grow into it and look at the results! Should that be what they do with Kane? I guess it depends if you have another batsman to put there which maybe we do in Dean Brownlie.

2) Is Reece Young international quality? People who follow/watch first class cricket closely say that Young is the best keeper batsman in the country by a distance. Unfortunately that hasn't translated into quality on the test stage. Runs in Hobart were hard to come by, absolutely but players that are supposedly not as good managed to graft through it and provide support to the guy at the other end. Young wasn't able to. His contributions in Brisbane with the bat were poor. I am not a wicketkeeping expert so can't comment on that really, obviously he dropped Clarke in Brisbane with a ball that swung back late so was a tough chance but you would still want your keeper to take those in a test match. The difficulty is though, do we have anyone better to take his spot? Kruger Van Wyk isn't available yet, Derek De Boorder is running up some good numbers with the bat but do you pick the guy to debut against the best pace-attack in the world right now in South Africa? Tough call. Very very tough call. My opinion is that I would give Young the Zimbo test, let him find some confidence and hope he takes that into the South African series. My off-season if I was Wright/Buchanan would be spent turning BJ Waitling from a part-time keeper to a test quality one because then the problem is solved.
- Brendon McCullum does not come into this equation because I believe the guy when he says his body will not let him keep in the long form.

3) What role does Daniel Vettori play in this team? Is he a bowler that bats? A batsman that bowls? I think these days he is probably the latter. In my team I would pick him to bat at 6 and expect runs from him while knowing that he is good for 30/40 overs a test match but is unlikely to rip through an international top-order anymore (lower orders are a different matter for the rabbit hunter though!) Having him as this means we can play four quicks or three and another spinner in the right conditions. Don't ask me who the other spinner is though because that is for a completely different conversation. If Vettori bats 6 it probably means no place for Jesse Ryder at the moment (unthinkable 12 months ago) but if Ryder gets back to a place where he can bowl 10-15 overs a day then you can pick him and have Vettori batting at 6/7 with the keeper and 3 quicks behind him.

I do genuinely think the future is bright for the Black Caps, this is a talented generation of cricketers we have coming through and who are maturing into good international cricketers at the moment. Most pleasing though is not that we have a good 11 but that we probably have a group behind these guys who are not far off or who are international standard and can push for a spot over the next five or so years.

So here is my talent pool, I would pick an 11 but I can't honestly make up my own mind on how I would fit everyone into a fully fit lineup.

Top Order group
McCullum, Guptill, Flynn, Waitling, Nicol, Williamson
Middle Order group
Taylor, Ryder, Brownlie, Vettori, Williamson, Flynn, Franklin, Broom
Keepers
Young, Van Wyk, De Boorder
Spinners
Vettori, Astle, Patel (at a push)
Quicks
Bracewell, Southee, Mills, Bennett, Milne, Wagner

We won something.... else!

So we were always going to win a Rugby World Cup, however long it took the odds were on the fact that we would probably do it.

Winning a cricket test in Australia though, I wasn't entirely confident that would ever happen in my lifetime. In fact winning a cricket test against Australia fullstop was always going to be difficult. On Monday however, we did it. Did anything suggest it was likely to happen? No. Did people give us a chance? No. Was it fucking mean? Yup!

I watched the last 30 minutes in a round about kind of way, after remembering that parking in an undercover carpark doesn't do good things for radio reception I set off in a mad-dash around an Auckland shopping mall to find a television. Luckily, I found a pub and enjoyed this historic moment in NZ sport with a group of people who seeminlgy have nothing better to do than drink on a Monday afternoon at 4 o'clock. There isn't a sport that I follow which can take you on the ride that test cricket can and this was certainly one of those test matches.

Many of my favourite sporting moments of the past five or six years come from watching great test matches; various Ashes tests stretching back to 05, a couple of Aussie v Africa tests and one or two of the Aus v India clashes. Unfortunately for NZ cricket fans we don't play enough test matches nor are we good enough at them to get close to good teams. This time though, we got close to a good* team and boy was it wonderful to watch, torture for sure but sporting theatre at its very best.

It's such a great feeling watching a team that you have invested so much mental energy in over the years at last repay some of that faith. The Black Caps are a tough team to follow, anyone who does it knows that but we all do it because we know that behind the inconsistency and the frustration is a really good cricket side. To win a test match you have to be better than the other team across all three disciplines of the game, in Hobart we were that. It means so much to us because we know they can be better than the good* teams, it is just that they have to show it more often.

Maybe this is the beginning of something, not a golden era but certainly an era where we have a good cricket side that can compete with the best teams in the world at home and abroad. Here's hoping, because to watch test cricket is great, to watch great test cricket is amazing and to watch great test cricket that your teams ends up winning is one of the best feelings I have ever expereinced.

good* - note: this Australian team are not a very good cricket team but it is still Australia and they are still a team of dead set fuckwits!

We won something..... at last!

On the 18th of March this year I wrote an entry titled "I just want to win something". I had just watched Brisbane win the A-League and I was left to lament the complete lack of success on the part of any of the three thousand odd sports teams I support.

Well, at last, on the 23rd of October my thirst for success, glory and the ability to belt out a Queen song in the pub was finally quenched. We were Rugby World Cup champions. At last we had won the crunch game in the big tournament and there was Richie lifting up that little golden cup we had lusted after for so long.

Thanks to some work contacts I had managed to secure a ticket, originally I had only planned on going to the 3rd/4th playoff and the semi the week before but as the tournament progressed and the hype grew I knew that any opportunity to get my hands on a ticket to the showpiece should not be passed up. So it was thanks to a RWC 2011 staff member that I ended sitting at Eden Park with four sheilas from work witnessing one of the greatest nights in our sporting history.

Everyone knows the story of the game, the fairytale that was the Beaver, the drama that was the French actually showing up to play. I can guarantee it was as horrible to watch live as it was to watch on Television.

So how did it feel at the end? Honestly, I can't really remember. The last 10 minutes were all such a blur; I think I spent a good deal of time with my head in my hands, some laughing nervously with my mate sitting next to me and presumably some of it shouting at the field (I should probably ask the girls if any of the language I was using would have been offensive to the 8-year old sitting next to me) The feeling at full time though wasn't esctasy, I dont even think it was the unbridled joy I remember feeling watching BOP win the Shield or watching Pasty save the penalty against Bahrain. It was relief, just relief. We had done it! After all the years of hurt and what should have beens we had done it. They didn't matter anymore because for the next four years there would be no elephant in the room, no hollowness in our yearly dominance of everyone else. We had won the William Webb Ellis trophy.

My only letdown of the night was how long it took for anyone to play "We are the Champions" Some may think it is naff and cheesy but for me that would be the moment I had waited for for so long. Unfortunately though, no-body played it at the ground and for at least two hours at the pub I was in post-game no one played it. It wasn't until perhaps 2am, at about the same time as I was having a rant to a NZ Television star and his father that no one had played it yet, that The Clare Inn came to my rescue and allowed me to warble Freddy's lines.

We are and will be the Champions for the next four years. I won something and life is good.

A Weekend in Hawera

I spent this last weekend in Hawera, South Taranaki. The reason for this is that the New Zealand Davis Cup team has played their last two home fixtures there (the reasons for this seemingly strange venue can be found here), and this weekend they had a home fixture against the Philippines.

New Zealand tennis is often talked about as being a bit of a joke. Especially the men’s game, which is in a dire situation. Our top-ranked player, Michael Venus, comes in at 305 in the world. Our Davis Cup team suffered the ignominy of being relegated to the Asia/Pacific Group Two (essentially the third division – after the Group One and the World Group) in 2005, and we spent five years playing such tennis superpowers as Pacific-Oceania, Kuwait, and Indonesia.

However, since then, the Davis Cup team has shown signs of a bit of a turn-around. Last year we emerged from Group Two after defeating Pakistan (our first tie in Hawera) and then beating Thailand away, in Nonthaburi. Incidentally, Group One is the same division as Australia and China. In the Group One this year, New Zealand lost 3-2 in Uzbekistan, sending us into this crunch clash with the Philippines. If we had lost that, we would’ve been in a one-off clash that would've meant relegation for the losing team. So this was an important fixture to win, to secure our spot in Group One for next season.

So to win 5-0 was more than a pleasant surprise. On Day 1 Rubin Statham won in straight sets over Ruben Gonzalez, the Filipino number two (who by accounts plays in similar sorts of tournaments as our guys), before Venus beat Cecil Mamiit in the best match of the tie. Mamiit was a former top 50 player, but at 35 wasn’t the force he once must’ve been. You could tell his game was still relatively sharp – just a very good player on the wane. So I thought the theme of the rubber was about our guys in their (erm) peak, against a guy who was much better than them once upon a time, but had lost some of his powers.

Venus won in five sets and did really well to hang in there. It was a positive sign for a guy who probably doesn’t play a lot of long five setters that he managed to maintain the intensity of his serves and groundshots throughout. In the tie against Pakistan last year he went through a similar experience, losing to the veteran of the team in a marathon (13-15 in the final set). So I think he probably learnt from that experience and used it against Mamiit. It was thoroughly enjoyable viewing.

Other than that performance, the most pleasing aspect of the tie was the performance of the doubles-pairing of Marcus Daniell and Artem Sitak on Day 2. They played Gonzalez and Mamiit, and looked the better team throughout. The first set went to a tiebreaker, but they closed that out 7-0, before winning the other two sets easily. And easy as that, the rubber was settled, 3-0. New Zealand were safe in Group One for another year.

Day 3 and the wins kept coming. Given they were dead rubbers the organisers shortened them to the best of three sets; which we dominated. Given the fact we had won the tie, the two final matches went to Daniell and Sitak, the two less experienced guys. The first was Daniell playing Jeson Petrombon, the young up-and-comer in the Philippines side. To be honest, he was pretty ordinary I thought, but he battled to win the first set before Daniell came right and won it in three. As the Kiwi said afterwards, he was poor until he “got angry enough to fire up” and pull through. It certainly was the lowest quality match on offer over the weekend.

For some strange reason, Mamiit decided to back up and play his third match in three days, and played the last rubber. This was despite the Filipino squad having Johnny Arcilla in the squad, who didn’t get on the court at all. Artem Sitak did well to beat the veteran. Artem is actually a very solid player, a big guy with a decent all round game. He's a good addition to the team. I did think Mamiit was definitely tiring by this stage; but I certainly can't blame the guy. He still had class about him, but it was too much for him to do alone. After Sitak had won in straight sets, New Zealand had their first clean sweep of a Davis Cup tie for two years.

So New Zealand is safe in Group One for the year. We don’t have any relegation playoffs this year, and our next rubber in the Davis Cup will be in next year’s competition. Depending on other results, it may even be a dream tie against the Australians. While I'm not going to go around claiming the state of our men's tennis is suddenly in great nick, more weekend's like this will help bring back a bit of faith. I don't think any of our boys will be challenging the world's elite players, but maybe things are on the improve after what has been a fairly dire few years.

Stu Musialik - next Nix signing?

As I was looking through the news last week I saw one piece of information that intrigued me. It said that Stuart Musialik, former Newcastle and Sydney player, two time A-League champion, was off-contract and struggling to find a club, either in the A-League or overseas (link).

Musialik was not retained by Sydney last year – he, nor the team, didn’t have a great season. At the end of the season, he was offered a contract extension with the club, (link) but it was withdrawn after he demanded more money. He played 22 games last year, and even captained the team on occasions (link). Since being released he has been training alone in Newcastle, hoping to find a contract somewhere.

"A-League clubs are either fully loaded or only have a minimum-wage spot left for an under-20 player," Musialik told the Newcastle Herald yesterday. "I have a couple of people putting feelers out for me overseas, but there is nothing concrete in the pipeline.” Well Stuart, I know one A-League club that hasn’t filled its roster too much – in fact at last count we only had 14! Do you fancy a year or two over here in Wellington?

I can only presume Ricki has looked into this possibility – but for me it’s a no brainer. The guy has played Olympic level footy for Australia, and played (and won) two grand finals. He captained Sydney at times last year. Surely he’s worth bringing over. The only thing I presume holding Ricki back is the fact he’s a central midfielder, possibly the only position on the field where we have a bit of depth (Muscat, Brown, Lia). But if all three are playing week-in week-out, like last year, another central midfielder will need to be signed up.

Ricki has said he wants to sign a goalkeeper, striker, and attacking midfielder, as well as the mandatory three under-23 players (fullback, central defender, and midfielder) to fill out the twenty player squad (link). Ok, so Musialik doesn’t fit into these categories. But last year, when guys like Danny Vukovic and Nick Ward were made available, we snapped them up, even if we had those positions (relatively) covered. Maybe this is one of those instances. In any cases, bringing in another quality and experienced A-League player can hardly hurt.

A decent signing like this would also help bring more stability around the perception of the club. The media seems to have gone a bit quiet on the demise of Terry Serepisos recently, and my personal policy on this is a mixture of positive thinking and no smoke (for a while at least) equals no fire. I honestly don’t know how much impact this uncertainty has had on the club’s recruitment, but with another ten weeks of the preseason remaining, it is my personal view that there is still absolutely no rush to finalise the squad, even if other teams have.

The Warriors development - a new path.

When it comes to the Warriors one thing has never been in question; they have a possibly unmatched ability to tap into a pool of natural talent quite unlike any other. The natural athleticism of Polynesian and Maori in New Zealand has always been evident and for many of them Rugby League has always been the sport of choice. It isn’t a coincidence that when you talk about the Warriors golden years it was the style of play they exhibited that many remember, a style of play driven by the likes of Ali Lauititi and Logan Swann, Stacey Jones and Francis Meli. Polynesians that played the game in the Polynesian way. Ray Warren famously said of the Warriors that ‘they were playing Basketball’ as Sione Faumuina and Ervarn Tuimivave combined to score one of the great Wariors trys at Suncorp in 2003. Tempering this belief however was that this natural flair needed to be tempered by ‘Australian solidity’, the great Warriors teams were littered with Australians that could quite comfortably be classed as workhorses or journeymen. Campion, Cleary, Carlaw are all good players and were great Warriors but they filled a void in that team.

This was the development dynamic the Warriors tried to build on in the years following, with mixed success. Some years they got it right, others they didn’t. But for most of those years, from the outside anyway, it seemed as though the template was the same. Get some natural Polynesian flair and mix it with some solid Australians and hope the mix works. It seems in the last 12-months though that this thinking has begun to change, driven largely by the huge success of the Junior Warriors in the NYC.

There is a school of thought that says (and this could be applied to a number of teams for whom I support) if you have success at developing talent at the Junior level eventually you have to start trusting it, especially if it has been as successful as the Warriors Junior Development programs. It seems this is the path the Warriors have decided to follow. The best example is around the halves. James Maloney has been a revelation since he joined the Warriors and continues to develop, but he question of who would partner him in the halves has been one hanging over the Warriors head for the last 18-months. For much of the previous four or five seasons the Warriors chased a high profile 7, they tried to bring Casey Maguire back from England and by all reports aggressively chased Cooper Cronk by throwing some pretty big dollars at him. In the end they got Brett Seymour, probably on the cheap, a guy who had a proven record in the NRL but came with obvious baggage. When the Warriors have been able to put this combination on the paddock consistently they have looked like developing into a quality halves combination, however probably not a title winning combination.

Sitting behind Seymour and forcing disclaimers on any discussion around the Warriors halves combination though was the development of the halves that were leading the Juniors to a title in the NYC and carving teams apart in the process; Shaun Johnson and Isaac John with Carlos Tuimavave floating around behind those two. Andrew Johns once said about Shaun Johnson that he could be one of the greats to ever play the game. Big pressure on a young kid. But it is this talent that the Warriors have decided to trust and have signed; Johnson, Isaac John and a local product Pita Goodinet to contracts for the next 2-3 seasons, all this means that Brett Seymour, who has a proven NRL record, has been let go.

Already the trust placed in the development programs have seen Russell Packer and Ben Matulino emerge as international class front rowers filling the void left by the retirements of Wiki and Price. Elijah Taylor seems to be the natural successor to Michael Luck, Sione and Sam Lousi are the next ball-playing second rowers in the form of Lauititi and Swann. In the outside backs it has taken a season but we are beginning to see why Kevin Locke was a superstar in the U20s and with Glen Fisiiahi floating about as well the Warriors are well served in the outsides. Throw in Alehaana Mara, Isaac John and Bill Tupou and you have the core of the U20 sides for the four seasons of the NYC all making contributions at the senior level (Sonny Fai also had begun to show the talent he had before he was tragically killed in a swimming accident).

So the Warriors have all this talent, they play like New Zealanders but they have the added bonus of having cut their teeth in a competition against Australian players that previous generations did not have. Do they continue to pad out the natural talent with workhorse Australians? I think in some situations absolutely, I wasn’t convinced by the signing of Nathan Friend as I would have trusted Alehaana Mara as the man to lead the Warriors round the park from 9. Players like Lillyman and Latimore are playing a role at the moment but should eventually be phased out so the young players of this country can be bought through.

The great question remains though, can success at U20 level translate to success at Senior level, does it take different kind of players to succeed at U20 and Senior level? Who knows, Josh Dugan was the best player in the first season of the U20s and he has turned out alright. Like I said before, there is not point investing in player development and not trusting it. So I’ll back the Warriors as they move forward, trusting young Kiwis. There may be some moments spent hiding behind pillows or throwing things around rooms as the ridiculous off-load is thrown but boy it will be fun!