In the aftermath of Ross Taylor's disastrous series against India that ended with an ungainly array of wild slogs, Black Caps coach Gary Stead has offered a defence of the veteran that was just as flimsy.
Taylor's spot in the side has come under the microscope after a tour in which he scored just 20 runs for four dismissals. In the second test in Mumbai he could do nothing about Mohammed Siraj's first-inning delivery which cleaned out his off stump on just his second ball, but in the second innings he was removed by Ravichandran Ashwin after eight deliveries in which he looked nothing like New Zealand's all-time top test runscorer.
When he swung for the fences off the first ball he received, Taylor had clearly opted to take the attack to the Indian bowlers, but unlike Daryl Mitchell, who did so while also respecting good deliveries with solid defence, Taylor looked like a man who trusted neither his defence or his technique.
It doesn't take a private investigator to unveil who Stead was talking about after day three when he pondered dismissals that made him think "geez, could we have done that a little bit better?", and he acknowledged all parties would be disappointed by Taylor's returns in India, including that Mumbai innings.
"I think Ross will go back and be disappointed in that. It's a fine balance though between trying to play aggressively and putting the spinners under pressure and also trusting your defence to bat for long periods. If you look throughout the whole test, Mayank Agarwal was one of the few players that actually managed to do that, and we still went past the outside edge of his bat on a regular basis."