Cricket: Metropolitan bar needs to be raised

There were plenty of howls but an absence of hows following New Zealand's embarrassing test defeats by Australia.

New Zealand was out-batted, even more badly out-bowled, and blatantly outclassed.

But how do we lift our levels to be on par with Australia? Pretty much deafening silence.

The only person who seemed to be talking any sense in the wash-up was an Australian, Greg Chappell.

Is it because our luminaries are running out of ideas? Nearly everything asked for since the early 1990s has been granted.

The first-class game has moved from three-day to four-day competition, in line with the Australian model.

New Zealand Cricket has developed a fantastic facility at Lincoln University to nurture young talent, and brought in Australian expertise in the form of Steve Rixon and Ashley Ross.

We have central contracts for our elite players and first-class players are rewarded with contracts from their associations, allowing NZC to retain experienced players who would have otherwise moved into alternate fulltime careers.

We have an expensive 'A' programme to develop a second tier of players below test level who should slot into test cricket.

Finally, we have guaranteed annual transtasman clashes.

If the gap remains, what next is to do? How much more hand-wringing will solve the problem?

While it is a fashionable sport to criticise sports' ruling bodies, NZC has, it could argue, done just about all that it can at the top levels of the game.

What Chappell believes, and it is hard to disagree with him, is that the strength of Australian cricket lies in its metropolitan club competitions. Which is all very well, because Australia has six or seven major cities which can sustain an excellent level of club cricket.

New Zealand has three, but of those Christchurch is perhaps the only club competition that rises above the mediocre.

Plus, where would that then leave the first-class associations, particularly Central Districts, without a major metropolitan base.

New Zealand club cricket, hamstrung by so many self-interested minor associations, is woeful in comparison to Australia. Poor pitches, not enough umpires and not enough coaches conspire to weed out many potential talents before they get to first-class level.

In Australia talented players come from outside the big cities to play in the metropolitan club competitions, or grade cricket as it is known there. It is a sacrifice they know they have to make if they want to go further.

Here, talented players will stay playing a poor standard of club cricket, learning poor habits playing on dreadful wickets. A talented player in, say, New Plymouth, is not going to sacrifice a steady job, a guaranteed spot in the Taranaki rep squad and endless days of sunshine (OK, that might be stretching it), to try his luck in Auckland.

So what Chappell suggests, as valid as it is, would require a massive cultural, as well as a sporting, shift.