Cricket: Wicket fears realised

The Hamilton pitch debacle has left the Black Caps under-prepared for Australia's visit.

New Zealand Cricket chief executive Martin Snedden said the three-match tsunami fundraising series had fulfilled two of three expectations, but had fallen short of giving the Black Caps desperately-needed match practice.

"When we set out on this we were looking to provide some cricket for the public in January.

"It's set up a vehicle to enable us to raise $1 million for the victims of the tsunami disaster.

"The only objective of the whole thing which wasn't satisfied was providing the Black Caps with really good quality build-up for the Australian series."

Black Caps allrounder Scott Styris added weight to that last week when he was reported as saying: "I'd been looking forward to these games as preparation for Australia but so far they have been a waste of time for me."

Snedden said the second one-dayer in Wellington, which the Black Caps lost, was the only match that came close to replicating the type of match play they can expect from Australia who begin their visit in less than three weeks.

"It didn't quite provide the hard match-play we were hoping for," he said.

With the fallout over the wicket at Hamilton continuing - 16 wickets fell for less than 170 runs - Snedden concedes his board got it wrong in allocating a match to Hamilton so soon after relaying the wicket block.

He is thankful though, that the ground's shortcomings were exposed in an unofficial one-day match rather than the abandoned test against Sri Lanka.

"It was a real grey issue because we knew the pitch block had been relaid and in April last year and we knew it took a while to settle. The type of soil we're using [waikari clay] has a really long life and it matures year after year, so your best cricket is after six or seven years. We thought there'd be some teething problems but we'd get satisfactory pitches for this season."

New Zealand Cricket can't claim they weren't warned about potential problems. Following the opening State Shield match at Westpac Park, the Herald on Sunday reported that there were grave concerns a satisfactory pitch would not be possible.

"It was difficult to judge off that because [curator] Karl Johnson had no chance of preparing that wicket because of the hopeless weather," Snedden said. "In the end we made an assessment and the fact is we got it wrong."

- HERALD ON SUNDAY