Cricket: Now it's a hard act to follow

By Richard Boock

David Trist's job as New Zealand cricket coach just became a lot tougher.

The man about to take over the reins from Steve Rixon did not seem to have a terribly hard act to follow when he was appointed last month, but is now about to inherit one of the most successful teams in New Zealand test history.

Only the side captained by Geoff Howarth through the early 1980s tasted more success than Rixon's nine test wins, and that team happened to contain a couple of fairly reasonable performers in Sir Richard Hadlee and Martin Crowe.

Rixon's side, in contrast, have concentrated on becoming a star team rather than a team of stars, and in the process of lifting their level of performance to a new high have also raised the level of expectations.

It used to be that the New Zealand cricket coach had nothing to lose but his self-respect and his friends.

Bob Cunis, the country's first official coach, managed to walk away after what (in hindsight) proved a comparatively successful reign, but most of the others met an untimely end after struggling to convert what was often a troubled and inexperienced squad.

Warren Lees and Glenn Turner both missed reappointment after run-ins with the New Zealand Cricket executive, and Howarth's brief tenure as national coach ended in unmitigated disaster.

Trist was named as Rixon's replacement last month, not long after New Zealand had folded in the first test at Edgbaston, but as he flew into Auckland from the Netherlands on Sunday morning, he learned he was about to take over a winning team.

This is not familiar territory for Kiwi coaches.

"The pilot recognised me on the flight and told me England were 100 for two," Trist said yesterday.

"I was disappointed but I didn't take to drink.

"Then he came over at the end of the flight and told me the result. My feelings probably mirrored the rest of the country, really - I was ecstatic and very proud.

"It's exciting to take over a team in good shape and the key now is to build on that success in India."

Next month's tour, involving three tests and five one-day internationals, will require a completely different approach from the New Zealanders, who are unlikely to find the defence of Tendulkar, Dravid, Ganguly and Azharuddin as porous as the English, nor the bowling as orthodox.

The difference with Trist is that he is one of the few former bowlers to have been given a significant role within NZC (with Frank Cameron, Dayle Hadlee and Cunis), and this subtle change in perception should be good news for the likes of Daniel Vettori, Chris Cairns and Dion Nash.

Undoubtedly his biggest challenge will be to address and improve the productivity of his batsmen, who, despite the heady excesses against England, were only marginally better than their opponents, and usually left the bulk of the work for their lower-order team-mates.

Of the specialist batsmen, Roger Twose fared the worst, aggregating just 73 runs in six test innings, but neither could any of the others be happy with their consistency, notwithstanding the centuries scored by Matt Horne, Nathan Astle and Craig McMillan.

In test cricket terms, one decent score in a four-test series is far from a satisfactory result, and the cold facts of the matter are that New Zealand would have lost the series if their bowlers had not managed to bat so well.

On the merit side, the attack looks far more settled (fitness permitting), the wicketkeeping of Adam Parore has improved, while the New Zealand fielding in general, and the slip-field in particular, has been world-class.