Cricket: Black Caps top order still creating massive headache

Ken Rutherford, infamously exposed as a makeshift opener on a tour of the West Indies in 1984, finds New Zealand's management of Lou Vincent "staggering".

The former Black Caps skipper believes the selectors continue to make stop-gap decisions at the top of the order because they are afraid to make the hard decisions.

Since 2000, around the same time Justin Langer and Matthew Hayden were striking up one of the most fruitful partnerships since Lennon was introduced to McCartney at a church fair, New Zealand has used a 1st XI's worth of openers.

Some of them were genuine opening prospects but a good few of them were sacrificial lambs. In the first test it was Vincent's turn, again, to play the martyr.

"It is a real issue," Rutherford said. "If there was a disappointing aspect of the Zimbabwe test, it's that it was clear neither Lou Vincent nor James Marshall were all that convincing.

"Marshall plays too many balls into the gully region to be an effective opener... and it seems staggering that we have a guy like Vincent, who scored 224 [against Sri Lanka in April 2005] in probably one of our best test innings for the past decade, and as the season starts we put him back up to opener. "The management just didn't seem to want to make the hard decision of leaving a Nathan Astle or a Scott Styris out."

New Zealand will go into tomorrow's second test against Zimbabwe knowing it would take a performance of catastrophic proportions to prevent them winning the 'test' series two-nil but in cricket terms this hasn't been a pointless exercise.

Shane Bond has had a trouble-free return to the test arena and Daniel Vettori and Brendon McCullum have reinforced the view that New Zealand can score runs down to at least No 9 in the order. But, on a flat pitch against an attack no more dangerous than the Grafton seconds, the Black Caps slumped to 24-2.

Last week Chris Cairns described the decision to open with Vincent as "putting a Band-Aid over a gaping wound".

Rutherford believed it was a failing in New Zealand Cricket's systems that has allowed the problem to fester, maybe as a result of too much emphasis on the one-day game to the detriment of test performances, making the point that past selectors might have been seduced by the fact Mark Richardson and Bryan Young transformed themselves into openers. "I would suggest they're the exception, not the norm.

"The crux of it is why haven't NZC sorted it out themselves through their academy, their development programmes, their provincial development programmes? Enormous expense is put in to have development officers around the provinces - why is there not a co-ordinated plan to say 'right, we haven't got a test opening batsman, why don't we go around the under-17 tournaments, the under-19s and let's grab the guy who can't hit it off the block but who will defy a test attack in five or six years time'?"

Rutherford said that although Bracewell's test record against anybody bar the minnows was poor, it was only fair to wait and see what difference Glenn Turner, New Zealand's finest opener, made to the selection strategy.

Turner was unable to comment on current selection issues but said there was no doubt that some of the technical aspects of batsmanship had deteriorated and it wasn't just New Zealand that was suffering.

"There's been a tendency for batsmen to loosen up and look for boundaries to the detriment of their technical ability," Turner said.

Turner made 103 first-class centuries, almost exclusively from the top of the order, but said words like persistence, perseverance, determination and knowing where your stumps are were not as highly regarded in today's cricket. "It's become increasingly difficult to get youngsters to put the same amount of time into the basic fundamentals of batsmanship.

"Also, more and more batsmen are playing on length, not line, so they're not leaving as many balls."

Richardson said New Zealand conditions encouraged shotless wonders to open and was therefore an unatrractive proposition for talented players.

"A lot goes down to the crap wickets we're playing on. If you want to bat in New Zealand, bat at No 5.

- HERALD ON SUNDAY