A luke-warm warm-up

Well, we didn't embarrass ourselves, but I don't think we learnt too much either. The light-weight pace attack put in a decent performance, although it is hard to judge what sort of quality our opposition was.

This morning's New Zealand Herald says that Jake Oram is likely to share the new ball in a very slim looking pace attack for the first test. John Bracewell has stated that he wants players to be in a position where they are forced to take responsibility for their performance. He suspects players go into cruise mode if they know that they have back-up. I like this thinking. It has its dangers of course - if we go into a test with two real pace bowlers and Styris as the third seamer, then we are onto a hiding to nothing if one of those quicks breaks down. But against Bangladesh that seems to be a gamble worth taking.

In other news, Peter Roebuck continues his recent trend of eulogising Australian batsmen. This time he goes into raptures over Damien Martyn.