Cricket: Selection blunders now exposed

By RICHARD BOOCK

If New Zealand Cricket are serious about developing a specialist one-day side, they should start by telling the selectors and team management.

Whatever mitigating factors might be held up in their defence, New Zealand's 1-2 capitulation to minnows Zimbabwe reinforced the suggestion that this squad were poorly selected before the series, poorly selected during the series, and were wanting for leadership in all but the first match at Harare.

New Zealand won the first one-day international under the caretaker captaincy of Roger Twose, but lost the doubleheader at Bulawayo at the weekend after two awful performances in the field, exacerbated by some questionable decisions from the recovered skipper Stephen Fleming.

Not only did Fleming fail to provide his most effective bowlers with their full complement of overs in the series-deciding third match, he also left the straight boundaries exposed, effectively discouraging his attack from bowling full and straight, and paid the price all around the park.

On present form, concern over Fleming's leadership might not rate high on the list of priorities for the tourists, who have already lost Daniel Vettori and Dion Nash to injury, and also have question-marks hovering over the fitness of Chris Nevin, Chris Cairns and Geoff Allott.

For all that, however, New Zealand's personnel problems might not be quite so acute had Sir Richard Hadlee's selection panel picked anything like a balanced squad in the first place, rather than the illogical and ultimately doomed party they came up with at the start of last month.

Any selector who includes two wicketkeepers in a tight, 14-man squad leaves himself open to questions, but the decision also to include three injured players and two woefully out-of-form batsmen made a laughing stock of the suggestion that NZC was moving closer to a specialist ODI side.

And just so that absolutely nothing would make sense, the selectors then decided to replace the injured Vettori with Glenn Sulzberger, who, while performing well in the first-class section of New Zealand A's tour to England, was hardly used in the one-dayers and bowled only 10 overs.

Nor was it a complete surprise to hear Hadlee making conciliatory noises at the weekend about his lines of communication with coach David Trist, although it was mildly interesting, given that he had initially denied any difficulties.

Clearly, there have been teething problems at the very least, and if the recent concern over consultation is any gauge, it is not unreasonable to suspect there may have been a fair amount of angst over the selection of players as well.

The other disturbing feature of the Zimbabwe series has been the baffling performance of the tour selectors, who appeared to forget the excellent form of spinner Paul Wiseman as soon as he collected his first test man-of-the-match award.

Having taken over from Vettori as New Zealand's No 1 spinner, Wiseman suddenly found that he was not required until the 45th over in the second test and that the selectors for some unaccountable reason preferred Sulzberger in the ODIs.

Things have hardly been any easier to understand on the batting front either, with the selectors managing to find a different opening combination in eight out of nine outings this season (tests and ODIs), using 11 different players in the position, including their best spinner, their best paceman, both wicketkeepers and their captain.

It makes no sense at all, but then again nothing much has on this tour.

Meanwhile, the national selectors have left Darryl Tuffey out of the squad for the ICC tournament in Nairobi.

Tournament rules allow for squads of 14 players, and New Zealand have 15 in Zimbabwe.

Hadlee said the fitness of players including Allott, Cairns and Nevin would be reassessed before the trip to South Africa, which starts with six ODIs.

New Zealand squad: Stephen Fleming (capt), Craig Spearman, Nathan Astle, Chris Nevin, Roger Twose, Craig McMillan, Chris Cairns, Adam Parore, Chris Harris, Scott Styris, Glen Sulzberger, Paul Wiseman, Geoff Allott and Shayne O'Connor.