Dylan Cleaver: Scared Black Caps weren’t ready to rumble

One of Stephen Fleming's favourite sayings this season is taken straight from boxing parlance.

"We'll keep getting up off the floor, because that's where we are at the moment," he has said, to paraphrase, approximately five-nil plus two-nil to the square root of Twenty20 times this season.

The only flaw in the Black Caps' game-plan has been that every time they 'defiantly' raised themselves from the canvas, the first thing they have done is offer their glass jaw to the Australians.

"No fear" was another catch cry but brains always beat fearlessness.

The Black Caps went about the recently completed series against Australia in completely the wrong manner. Sri Lanka might offer respite but redemption doesn't come that cheap. The enduring memory of this season will be the Black Caps playing servant to a hyped up master.

Australia have been talked up so much it has got to the point of propaganda.

The only way it could have been increased would have been if New Zealand Cricket arranged an aerial leaflet drop at all the test grounds with slogans like GILCHRIST IS BRADMAN!! and McGRATH IS UNPLAYABLE!!!

Conversely, New Zealand were so badly afflicted by plague and pestilence they were forced to round up a team from the Chatham Islands.

New Zealand were weakened, out-played and out-pointed by a magnificent team but not one that contained 11 players at the peak of their powers.

That is an untruth the Black Caps would love you to believe.

Matt Hayden was hopelessly out of touch. Michael Clarke never adjusted to the conditions and Justin Langer's stats were inflated by two not-outs chasing inadequate fourth-innings targets. Apart from two spells, Jason Gillespie hardly fired a shot and Michael Kasprowicz was below par.

True, the stars that shone brightest were almost blinding but having nearly half your team out of nick should've been the signal for the Black Caps to attack, not waiting back using the rope-a-dope tactic.

If the New Zealand batsmen had a method to score against McGrath and Shane Warne then most of them hid it.

Speaking to an ex-international last week, he bemoaned the lack of manipulation that would have allowed the bunt-and-running Lou Vincent to bat more in partnership with the extremely quick Hamish Marshall. More potential dot balls turned into improbable ones. That, he argued, would have "annoyed the hell" out of the Australians.

 

The bowlers failed to join the dots. New Zealand's three premier seamers (replacing Iain O'Brien with Nathan Astle in the third test) bowled a total of 44 maiden overs in the series, while Australia's three seamers, despite Gillespie and Kasprowicz being below their best, managed 92.

That's a massive discrepancy.

At the risk of throwing one too many jabs at this subject, Sri Lanka offers the Black Caps several drops in weight division that should suit.

If Australia are the heavyweights, England are the middleweights. Pakistan, India and South Africa sit at about welterweight, while New Zealand, Sri Lanka and an over-matched West Indies compete in the lightweight division.

If we struggle over the next two weeks, the Black Caps can't complain too much if they're lumped with the flyweights.