Remember those halcyon days when the sun was shining, the cicadas were chirping, the grounds were heaving and cricket viewing figures were up a whopping 21 per cent?

Remember when names like McCullum and Vettori were knocking the World Cup flop All Blacks off the back pages? When talk of cricket's brave new world dominated talkback?

Funny to think that was only a few months ago. New Zealand had thrashed England in the one-day series and, while ultimately disappointing in the test series, it was at least competitive and the people were voting with their feet and their remotes.

Last night you could imagine the only people tuning in to the latest New Zealand debacle were those who found their local S&M clinic had suddenly closed and they needed a quick pain fix before bed.

To mangle a well-worn advertising campaign: It's not the fact they're losing, it's how they're losing.

New Zealand are now in the process of writing a grim tale: How to turn a sport from boom to bust in five easy steps.

1. Make the players look like money-hungry frauds

Whichever way you slice it up, the Indian Premier League ended up being an almost unprecedented PR disaster for New Zealand Cricket. Their hands were tied in ways that it is difficult to explain in less than 1500 words, let alone a paragraph, but it went something like this.

To stop an exodus to the rebel Indian Cricket League in the wake of Shane Bond's multi-million dollar deal, Daniel Vettori, Stephen Fleming, Scott Styris, Brendon McCullum and Jacob Oram were 'encouraged' to sign with the sanctioned IPL. There was some dismay when their pots of gold turned out to be strictly pro rata rather than lump sum so, rather than having to deal with a bunch of disenchanted players, NZC felt it more politic to let them maximise their deals to the extent they didn't have to turn up on time for the England tour. Got it?

Considering most of the players mentioned still have plenty years worth of earning potential it smacked of greed but was, to a certain extent, understandable.

What was less acceptable was some of the egregious justifications given for the no-show. Vettori fronted with less than a captain's knock when he stated that the warm-up games were superfluous to requirements and that New Zealand never usually had lead-in matches anyway. In saying so he produced the unsatisfactory quinella of being utterly wrong on both fronts.

Others tried to justify the absence by saying that the intense cricket the IPLers would play would provide better preparation than the county games. You can count the different ways that statement is stupid: different format, different balls, different freakin' country.