Cricket: McMillan dropped for series against Sri Lanka

Speculation over the international future of Craig McMillan increased yesterday after the burly Cantabrian was jettisoned from the one-day squad for the upcoming series against Sri Lanka.

Ditched from the test team after the tour of England, McMillan squandered a freak recall in Australia but played no part in either of the Chappell-Hadlee one-dayers, having effectively lost his place to Mathew Sinclair.

Any brownie points he might have retained after an impressive eight-year career were almost certainly cashed in at Brisbane last month, when he lost his head and charged in the first innings of the opening test, and talked himself out in the second.

The 28-year-old veteran of 156 ODIs now faces a difficult task to rekindle his career, particularly as rival batsmen such as Hamish Marshall and Sinclair have taken some of their recent chances, and look a better bet for the future.

On top of that, New Zealand have several promising young batsmen such as Jesse Ryder and Ross Taylor making their mark at State Championship level and slowly building up a decent case for consideration.

Never a consistent ODI contributor, McMillan is not helped by a mediocre average of 27.60 and the fact he's managed to score just two centuries despite many opportunities up the order.

Also working against him is his apparent lack of flexibility in terms of his batting, in that he has made it clear that doesn't want to open or bat in the top four, but would prefer a position around No 5 or 6.

But with Marshall flourishing and players such as Jacob Oram and Brendon McCullum looking well-suited to taking more batting responsibility, there are unlikely to be any middle-order vacancies in the foreseeable future.

On the flipside, however, the hard-hitting right-hander has made great strides over the past couple of years in the shorter game, and can boast an average of 40.33 over the past 20 ODIs.

During that time he scored half centuries against Pakistan, South Africa, the West Indies and the United States, but probably still lacked the consistency to ward off challenges from rival players.

Meanwhile, Sri Lankan skipper Marvan Atapattu has thrown down the gauntlet to New Zealand over their Super Series hopes, telling reporters yesterday that the tourists' aim was to be ranked No 1 in the world before the next World Cup in 2007.

New Zealand have an outside chance of taking the mantle in March and qualifying for the ODI series against the Rest of the World, but only if they win this summer's series against Sri Lanka and Australia.

"Ratings matters at the end of the day," Atapattu told Colombo's Daily News. "But they will take care of themselves if we put things in place on the day.

"We'd like to be No 1 at any given time, but we will have to work towards it. We cannot do it overnight; it has to be during a set period.

"We'll try and achieve that and the best time will be before the 2007 World Cup."