The players' awards

The New Zealand Herald, always one to bury good news beneath bad, has stuck with its usual reporting policy by noting the fact that Daniel Vettori was the players' choice for player of the year in an article entitled "Facilities not good enough say players". Both pieces of news came from the New Zealand Cricket Players Association annual survey of players. Amongst other highlights of this survey were the voting of Brent Bowden as best umpire (which the Herald led into with "While players agree that umpiring standards need to be raised..."), Stephen Fleming best test batsman, Nathan Astle best one-day batsman, Hamish Marshall best fielder and Ross Taylor the best emerging player.

I guess the Herald just finds that bad news sells more papers. Perhaps we could take a similar line here at Mike on Cricket to raise our readership? Expect to see a series of articles coming soon with headings like "Kyle Mills - NOT voted cricketer of the year", "Nathan Astle makes a golden duck (and in other news New Zealand win by an innings)" and "Wellington lose State Championship final".