Tuesday, 13 November 2007

Karl on ... the wrong batsmen are playing

What seemed quite apparent to me in the weekend's loss to South Africa were two things - our best batsmen were woefully out of touch and clearly hadn't played any cricket in a long time; and our new opening partnership look out of their depth.

A good coach should ensure that his players arrive on a tour with their eye in, and a good coach should ensure that the best 11 players take the field, not his favourite 11. There seem to be quite clearly issues between John Bracewell and two of our more experienced players: Lou Vincent and Mathew Sinclair.

The new selection panel should force Bracewell to play both of these players. Sinclair's 189 not out in a day just cannot be ignored.

And why did they not spend a couple of weeks in Darwin playing a NZ B side?

1 comment:

Soulberry said...

That's true. Injuries are there of course, but we are wondering why the better players aren't on the team. Then again, NZ is losing players to county and elsewhere - Hamish Marshall for instance.