The Indian tour has been cancelled "by mutual consent", which presumably means that the Indian board offered New Zealand Cricket a bit of a bribe and promised to play us at another time. The Indian excuse is that they do not want to prepare for the World Cup in the West Indies by playing on New Zealand surfaces - which rings true given they prepared for the last World Cup by getting thrashed on our green seamers.
New Zealand summers have been terrible in the past few years. Barely a season hasn't gone by without a huge hole in it for some reason or another, and when we do get play games are usually of a one-sided and dull nature. I hope New Zealand Cricket has a plan 'B', because the fans need some international cricket to watch and our own World Cup preparations need to consist of something more than Otago vs Central Districts at Molyneux Park.
Thursday, 19 January 2006
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3 comments:
I would have called it an 'excuse' had Indian board decided to organise a (money spinning) home-series against Eng/Aus etc in that time slot.
Right now it appears to be a genuine move, despite the board making a lot of noises about India not getting its share of wealth back from cricket.
It solves NZ and Australia's problem of when to schedule the Chappel-Hadlee trophy. And speaking from a biased perspective, I think it's probably better preparation to play Australia intensively before the world cup than India.
What would be really nice, from the perspective of the smaller nations was if openings like this were used to bring in the Associate teams. I'm not suggesting a series soley vs Kenya for example (lets stay close to home), but maybe bring them in to a tri-series. Can't see it actually happening, but it would make a hell of a difference to World cricket in the long term.
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