Brendon McCullum is no opening batsman, and his talents will remain further unfulfilled while he continues in the role.
Since making a double century in Hyderabad, the 30-year-old has averaged in the mid-20s as an opener over nine innings. You don't need the record book to know he's not suited to the role. His technique is too risky, too loose. McCullum, who has a decent test average by New Zealand standards, doesn't look like an opener. He doesn't have the application to adapt his game either.
Unlike the truly great attacking openers - a rare breed including Australian Matthew Hayden, who is about to take up the T20 cudgels at the age of 40 - McCullum lacks a base from which to consistently launch his brilliant shot-making against new ball attacks. Hayden destroyed opponents with a presence that said he had learnt the opener's craft, and then expanded upon that.
The rot starts at the top with New Zealand cricket, and many careers and averages have fallen like dominoes because of this.
We've had two excellent openers in Glenn Turner and Mark Richardson, the latter almost entirely dependent on knowing how to die for the cause slowly. A couple of other stout troops could hang about in the trenches. The rest of our openers specialised in falling like flies.
The problem is so bad that wasting McCullum's talents for an average supply of 20 runs as an opener is a reasonable deal. Martin Guptill takes longer to get fewer runs with about a third as much style.
In the finest traditions of New Zealand cricket, Daniel Vettori had to - once again - lead a middle-lower order campaign against humiliation, although he couldn't quite pull this off. Vettori is a remarkable cricketer, and we would be hopelessly lost without him.
Meanwhile, the theorising that plagues New Zealand cricket goes on and on. This includes, of late, a perfectly logical piece from Turner about the pitfalls of certain captain/coach/selector arrangements. From a bystander's point of view, though, there is an awful lot of talk and not enough walk in New Zealand cricket. All the different theories and coaches, selection panels and captains have been unable to solve the key problem around the top order batting.
There has to be a deeper problem that needs solving well beyond the top table seating arrangements. Martin Crowe, for one, says we don't put enough emphasis on our domestic first-class competition.
Considering the small pool of players in this country, New Zealand produces excellent talent when you can include McCullum, Ross Taylor and Jesse Ryder in the same side. Yet New Zealand has lost the ability to hone talent into fine careers and results, to consistently play tactics, to find a formula beyond one that looks as though individuals are playing for Indian T20 contracts or have so much money in the bank that test cricket is a lark. Compare this to the way Ricky Ponting is hanging on to his career for dear life, or how Mark Greatbatch once batted forever to save a test.
This game in Brisbane is among the most depressing and humiliating of our test defeats when you consider the state of the Australian team and our test cricket. It was a rare chance to put a small reversal on a dismal record in Australia and wow both the public and test schedulers.
Those speckled seats at the Gabba may fool the eyes briefly, but bean counters see past colourful cover-ups. If we play like drongos we'll mainly get drongos to play against and will thus disappear as a test cricketing nation via ever-decreasing circles.
