The Silver Fern

@Cyclops Yep - that's what I meant.

I wouldn’t mind seeing a nz team or two joining the big bash, we have a lot of kiwis playing now anyway and great experience on Aussie decks too

Jeez that's a crazy score card. First time in T20 history that a chasing team has two players get a century.

@MN5 said in West Indies tour of NZ:

If I was doing a less than expert ranking of NZ keepers it would be something like.......

Watling
McCullum
Smith
Blundell
Parore

First two should be self explanatory, I remember Smithy being sensational in partnership with Hadlee although being very hit or miss with his batting ( as guys were in his era ) he may have been a better keeper than one and two......

Blundell despite his woes still did a good job overall even if Hay looks a superior replacement and Parore was a classy keeper and lovely looking batsman ( record doesn't really indicate it )

Apparently Wadsworth was very good but I'm too young to have seen him play.

Would any others warrant a mention ?

Only other NZ keeper on the linked list is Warren Lees who was also reasonable (Smith's predecessor). Smith was the best keeper I've seen play on the keeping side, but I also don't think there's enough in it to be worth selecting him in test cricket over Watling or McCullum so I agree with your order of 1-3 as a list of keepers without any thought as to team balance - I would put Parore above Blundell though. It's easy to forget how good a keeper Parore actually was, but he comes up on a lot of the all time stat lists and often near the top. On Parore's batting, he played as a specialist batter for a bit while we experimented with Lee Germon as specialist captain and keeper for anyone who remembers those particularly dark days of the 90s... Had he applied himself better at not getting out, he could well have been our best ever instead of debating whether he's 4th or 5th on our all time list.

Having said that, in an all time side, Hadlee, C Cairns and Vettori would be reasonable all rounders so needing Watling for his batting would be slightly less important unless specifically selecting a grinder at 6 or 7. Smith usually batted 8 or 9 and had a very high SR as he was a dasher rather than a grinder so would probably fit right into modern ODI/T20s in the later middle order or pinch hitter (he still has the world record for highest score at 9).

https://www.reddit.com/r/Cricket/comments/4xdsev/stats_looking_at_test_wicketkeepers/ - always dangerous looking at Reddit posts, but on the topic of byes, IDS Smith was the third lowest Byes per Innings on the list (scraped from match cards apparently so no Statsguru link available), which backs up him being the best NZ keeper ever on the keeping side of the ledger. Interestingly, Parore and McCullum were both better than Watling on that measure, but Watling also hadn't finished playing yet so may have improved since the work was done.

@KiwiPie said in Ashes 2025/6:

@Donsteppa said in Ashes 2025/6:

The story about Carse in a casino sounds interesting.

What was that story???

From the Telegraph via Stuff. Looks like the event itself was in a cafe, just that the team were staying in a casino:

The morning after England’s sucker-punch of an opening Ashes defeat in Perth, Brydon Carse was sat at a riverside cafe with his team-mates Zak Crawley and Harry Brook.

Carse put his hand in his pocket, and accidentally dislodged what eyewitnesses described as thousands of dollars in cash that flew into the air.

Patrons of the cafe, including English cricket journalists enjoying a quiet coffee, were left scrambling to grab the cash and return it to Carse. Crawley looked mortified.

The incident, whether innocent or otherwise, acts as an emblem for an Ashes tour that was loose, careless and at times downright baffling.

Bear in mind that Carse, just a year prior, had served a three-month ban for betting on cricket matches, which leads us into England’s curious choice of where to stay in Perth.

Loose behaviour and a casino stay

England opted to stay at Crown Towers, an opulent casino complex that is home to one of the best hotels in Australia. It was within a short walk of the new stadium, but living in a casino for weeks, with a total of two competitive days of cricket after the first test ended so quickly, put temptation everywhere.

The players, often well-oiled, frequented the casino’s tables in full sight of England fans and other punters, some of whom were there because it was one of the only places in Perth open after hours and showed Premier League football.
....

Source: https://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/360922816/inside-story-booze-fuelled-ashes-tour-divided-stokes-and-mccullum

@No-Quarter said in Black Caps v Australia T20 Series:

Mitchell Marsh is our fucking nemesis in this form. He took the T20WC away from us as well after Kane played a blinder.

I think he came on the fern and read all of the things that @NTA told him he needed to work on and came back and dominated.

Guys who are bits and pieces at test level can absolutely dominate in this form of the game.

@NTA said in Cricket: WTC Final Oz vs SA:

@sparky said in Cricket: WTC Final Oz vs SA:

@Smudge Was the ICC Chairman man of the match or something?

It's like something the dictator of a small country would post on social media.

He looks like a young, Indian version of John Howard.

He has twice the forehead John Howard has

@LABCAT said in Black Caps v Pakistan:

Given that Hay is batting at 8, starting to feel like they should be putting the foot on the accelerator.

Yeah scoring rate still seems a touch slow given we're losing 8 overs.

Still, series won so probably not too much of an issue.

@No-Quarter said in ICC Champions Trophy 2025:

@canefan said in ICC Champions Trophy 2025:

I was more gutted about losing the ODI final in England. We was robbed that day

Yeah, India's ground advantage was a factor, but the ODI final against England hurt the most because outside of the crazy umpires decisions we actually won the match losing less wickets overall, but had it taken from us due to that bizarre boundary hit rule that has never been used for any other tournament. I don't think I'll ever get over that, that was our chance to win the thing and instead the ICC made a farce of it all.

Without dwelling too much on it were the teams even aware of this ridiculous rule ?

It is stupid because surely it's irrelevant to some extent how many boundaries are hit, more impressive to get there with less wickets lost ?

Highlights -

The only time Conway has looked like recapturing his form lately is when he plays aggressively, so I hope the plan is for him to go out and play a few shots. Like @Chris I'm concerned about his footwork though, even at his peak he was never a big mover of his feet but these days he seems to be stuck in concrete. You get away with that more in the shorter forms though, and he still has an incredible eye.

Watching that innings from Mitchell Owen reminded me of a few years ago - when the youngest innocently asked why "they don't just hit lots of sixes?"

What a stage to play a legendary innings like that on.

I think it reflects a pretty mediocre year overall for test cricket.

There are names there that I thought WTF but when you look at their figures it makes sense. Atkinson took 52 wickets at 22.15 in 9 matches. Henry 48 @ 18 Hazlewood 35 @ 13 but missed 40% of Aussies tests.

Ducket only averages 37 but what opener set the world alight last year. Not any Oz or Saffa.

Jadeja shades Lyon. Smith looks the tidiest keeper with a good batting record. Hazlewood is the only player that looks an obvious omission, but as I said maybe they figure he breaks too easily. Plus Aussie had a really soft programme. Pakistan Windies and India (minus Josh in the main) at home and two tests against us away.

@mariner4life said in Black Caps First Eleven for hall of fame.:

god Martyn was a beautiful player to watch.

Lara is my go to, that extravagant back lift gave it that little extra panache.

2nd best batsman ever. Best to watch in action

@Snowy nonsense. ABs are just paying homage to the Athletic Park retirement village whenever they play in Welly. Respect your elders peers.

@barky1 said in Australia v India:

@NTA Basket Case of a side when you have a guy retiring mid-series. A strange dude, was Ashwin

He got out before it blew up.

1st ODI tonight. Weirdly, this is our first ODI this year. Sri Lanka have played 15 this year, so this is mostly an us thing. I'm a bit sad (I quite like ODI cricket), but also if dropping ODI in favour of more T20 cricket allows us to also run a full test program (by NZ standards) then I'm okay with that. The tour of India would not have been better if it had been three ODIs and two tests, for example.

Just saw Mitchell's dropped catch. That was a shocker.

A ten year old (ish) in the nineties:

@No-Quarter said in Black Caps v Sri Lanka Test Series:

watching our pop gun attack getting ground into the dust conceding 600/3.

and in 2024:

@Donsteppa said in Black Caps v Sri Lanka Test Series:

The ten year old cricketer in the house is still bemused at one team scoring 602/5

It's taken us a quarter of a century to improve by 2 wickets.