Paul Lewis: Mills at three sent out the wrong signal

One of the strangest things I have ever seen in cricket, before Kyle Mills came to the crease to bat No 3 for New Zealand against South Africa, was the pitch on which we were about to play occupied by deer and Canada geese.

Goose may be the operative word for whoever it was who came up with the idea of sending the always-keen Mills in to have a crack at the South African pace attack on an entirely suspect wicket.

But, before we get into that, let's finish the tale of the deer and geese. We were playing in an idyllic Hampshire village, where the cricket square was in the grounds of the manor of the local squire. The grounds were given over to small lakes and wildlife - hence the deer and the geese. The word 'beautiful' doesn't really do it credit. But the fence which separated wildlife from cricketers had come askew and many of the animals had moved through to inspect this piece of greenery normally denied them.

When we'd shooed them back and restored the fence, we then set about ridding the pitch of a few large dollops of goose and deer dung, before we were stopped by the umpire. I might add this was village cricket - and thus only a rung or two above hopeless - so the umpire's intransigence about not allowing us to remove the goose do seemed a trifle over the top, shall we say. But he felt strongly that we had to play the pitch as it lay. Strange man, he seemed to be confusing things with golf.

There followed the entirely weird spectacle of watching our bowlers trying to land the ball in a couple of strategically placed piles of goose effluent. I suspect Kyle Mills would have gladly traded the Centurion pitch for goose poo any day but what the blue blazes was Mills doing there in the first place?

New Zealand, in a run chase on a nasty pitch, suddenly had three people batting out of position at the top of the order - two openers who don't open and a No 3 who is normally a No 10, albeit with some batting talent.

Not that we saw it. Two balls later, predictably, Mills was on the long walk back to the changing room, no doubt suffering a bit of an identity crisis ("Am I a bowler or a batsman? Should I now chuck my bat and say words that rhyme with truck? Will I be an off-spinner next week?").

Now, to all those who feel that John Bracewell and Stephen Fleming know a great deal more about test cricket than I do - absolutely right. Of course they do. Which makes it all the more incredible that one or both of them would send in Mills in those circumstances.

The rationale was apparently to use Mills to ward off the demon deliveries of the aggressive South African attack and to last out the morning so the better batsmen could take advantage of a slightly more benign pitch in the afternoon.

Let's examine, for a moment and with the entirely helpful advantage of hindsight, this decision. You can't even call Mills a nightwatchman - batsmen hoisted up the order to see off the last overs of an evening when the batting side has lost a wicket and doesn't want to expose a recognised batsman to such pressure.

No, Mills was an innovation, entirely new to international cricket - a new-ball-watchman. Yes, folks, we were depending on the skills of a No 10 batsman - who has much

less experience against a new and moving ball - to guide us past the missile launchers and rocket-propelled grenades of the South African quicks on an entirely untrustworthy pitch. And this while international class batsmen - Fleming, Styris, Astle and Oram, among others - sat in the pavilion.

Oh, and there's the small matter of Lou Vincent sitting at home and not even on this tour because, apparently, his technique is not up to being an opener. Or a No 3 presumably. One of our makeshift openers, Hamish Marshall, was under intense pressure to get runs as his place in the team has been questioned, even to the extent that some feel he is a bit of a teacher's pet. The other, Peter Fulton, has made a good fist of a career, still in its infancy, as a No 3 but was opening because New Zealand cricket cannot seem to produce decent openers. Meanwhile, specialist openers selected for this tour - Michael Papps and Jamie How - were not required. Go figure.

I heard radio commentator Bryan Waddell - obviously obeying the unconscious urge not to be too snaky to people you are on tour with - saying that it would be easy to criticise the Mills ploy and we wouldn't be criticising it if it had come off. Well, yes, Bryan, it is and we wouldn't.

There is a reason why cricket's leading sides don't play a new-ball-watchman on a dodgy track. Because they'd be asking them to do a job for which they are not equipped.

For all those about to quote Jason Gillespie's recent 200 after being sent in as Australia's nightwatchman against Bangladesh - that was Bangladesh, the pitch was benign, he went in at 67-1 (hardly a crisis) and he didn't have to cope with the new ball as delivered by Makhaya Ntini and Dale Steyn.

The argument over nightwatchmen or whether batting sides should just send in a batsman qualified to do the job is one of cricket's oldest. But once wickets start tumbling, the bowlers grow an extra arm and the pressure intensifies on those still to come to the crease.

The philosophical debate over new-ball-watchmen will be short-lived. Because if you carry this to its logical conclusion, you would reverse the batting order and open with Chris Martin and James Franklin.

Now there's a thought.