Pot kettle black

There are times when hypocrisy is so blatant that it takes the breath away. The White House is particularly good at providing examples of this. But when Richard Boock writes an article calling for "balance" you really have to wonder at the sanity of the world. Boock is not a bad writer, and he is certainly an entertaining one, but balance is perhaps the last word that would leap to mind when describing his work. As far as he seems concerned any angle is good, so long as it paints John Bracewell in a bad light. And despite this article purportedly being about how nice and balanced the New Zealand World Cup squad looks, Boock can't quite stop his own rather unbalanced view of the world from intruding. "Balance hasn't been a word widely associated with John Bracewell since he took over as New Zealand coach" he starts with before grudgingly accepting that "Whatever you might make of his 2007 combination, Bracewell has at least avoided [the] sorts of extremes [experienced in 1999 and 2003]." The annoying thing is that this build-up is followed by some genuine praise of the line-up. It is almost as if Boock wanted to praise the selections, but really, really didn't want to give any credit to the selector.