Dan has e-mailed me to ask why I have posted about Michael Slater's retirement rather than giving him a preview of the third test. And the answer is that I have started and tried several times already, but have not been able to manage it. The prospects for the game are just too gloomy for me to face. The body language of the New Zealanders at Headingly made it clear the side has next to no chance of winning at Trent Bridge. And when you realise how many of the bodies that body language is coming from are broken, then the "next to" in "next to no chance" becomes redundant.
Vettori is out. Papps is out. Bond is out. Tuffey is out. (The latter is somewhat of a mercy after his dreadful bowling in the first two matches). With such a short-sightedly small squad we have had to take desperate measures to put a team on the park. As there are no fit spinners within a few thousand miles of Nottingham, James Franklin has been plucked from league cricket to replace Vettori and provide "variation" to the attack(he bowls his dribbly medium pace from left-arm over - golly). Kyle Mills gets a shot at test cricket despite achieving the incredible feat of bowling worse than both Tuffey and Martin in the warm-up matches. And Craig McMillan is back. I can't do anything more at that piece of news than sigh.
The worst thing about this all of course, is that somewhere inside me there is still a kernal of hope. And hope is a bastard of a thing, because it means I will still be disappointed when we lose.
Thursday, 10 June 2004
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Mark Richardson is just a bloody legend. He is so consistent, and puts to shame Jeremy Coney's calls earlier in the year for him to be dropped.
Admittedly he had a bad series against South Africa (110 runs in 5 innings, high score of 45). But in the current series, about 320 from 5 innings, with 2 50s and 1 century. He's currently rated 11 in the PWC rankings (but after this test should go back to 10). Rated higher than Youhana, Laxman and Trescothick.
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