Jeremy Coney: In search of a cure for this summer of discontent

By JEREMY CONEY

Dear Cricket Supporter,

So you've phoned talkback, shared your views in a scathing bout of bar gossip and read the editorial that steams with discontent.

You've seen the conspicuously empty carpark areas and tried to convince your son's team to go to the game, but have been met with implacable defiance that the ICC champions are playing poorly, it's too expensive and Super 12 is around the corner.

But what is to be done with the New Zealand cricket team?

In these days of instant solutions, the tyranny of e-mails and wearable art, everyone (including Trist) searches for a quick answer. Truth is, it's not there. Solutions come on foot, not by satellite.

From a wider perspective, the answers involve New Zealand Cricket. Perhaps they could turn their eye to our domestic competitions and apply the template more is more to that area of the game.

Forget the abundant corpus of internet, one-day games, and attend to the decline of club cricket, stabilise our first-class structures that recoil from season to season. And re-establish tried-and-true procedures for selection to Black Cap status from Shell Trophy nurseries of the game.

This way the growing list of young players won't experience the anxieties of learning in the international arena (despite all their efforts), at having their failures highlighted in the nation's contemptuous glare.

So supporters, what then about the immediate problem? At the risk of duplicating your thoughts and suggestions, forgive an oldtimer riddled with decrepitude, a craving to purge some post-series defeat angst.

One-day cricket is tiring for players. The routine of displacement from hotel to hotel, plane to plane, packing to unpacking, meetings and obligations can undermine a concentrated gaze. We can understand that, yet most people won't understand the lassitude that overwhelms a losing team.

Trouble is - it's not a time for "most people." It's time to be above all that. Professional status does not allow for the foibles of human nature. Other activities like golf and sailing can be useful to lift sagging spirits and help relaxation. However, if things are going badly it's just not an option.

Right now there's a need to subdue the urge to take an easy way out. Think, dig in and get net rash.

Cricket is a game that demands constant repetition: staring through the bars of a helmet, taking another single to long off, resisting the temptations to pass responsibility to the shoulders of the next batsman, taking your jersey with pleasure, after stoically keeping the ball straight and on a length for a maiden over.

Inevitably, over the years, every player experiences loss of form. At these times he has to eliminate the frivolous and return to a basic platform that his success is built upon.

Players must seek the seeds of improvement inside themselves. We've heard the call for our experienced players to stand up and be counted. However, experience is not how many games you've played but how much you've learned. Some of our players have been cultivated through Warren Lees, Geoff Howarth, Glenn Turner, Steve Rixon and now David Trist. Surely there's something there to call upon.

Confidence, we're told, is at rock bottom, yet it's an ephemeral thing. It's there one day and gone the next. Like a drive through extra cover today that ends up in the hands of gully tomorrow. Don't forget Sri Lanka were low on confidence four games ago. Now, it's been rediscovered and is thriving.

Confidence comes from performance. And, if the results are absent the real issue becomes: how to perform? The short answer is personal bravery. The best players hold a deep-seated belief they can play. Our players must have the courage to be loyal to their own abilities.

This is only part of it. Confidence alone doesn't make for success. A mentally competent person falls short if he's technically inadequate. So our players must understand technical skills - and determine to make them habits through practice. I'm sorry I can't disguise that there's nothing new here.

Stroke preparation is a key. A balanced stance, so weight can be moved either forward or back. Some of our players lose this equilibrium and consequently produce an unstable platform to play from.

Getting the bat up early so shots evolve from an arc is the reason golfers don't stab the ball from the tee with a short arm hack. The feet must move into a position so a cricket stroke can be effected. Then bat in the nets as if you're building an innings in the middle.

Eschew the desire to stand and deliver or block and bash. It's very difficult to be caught out if the ball's on the ground. Practise letting it go, respect the good ball and defend it back where it's come from. Then after 10 minutes play the three or four shots you've decided to build your innings upon.

Look to take singles all the time. Run them at practice. It makes the field nervous. Often, it brings them in. No one likes the taciturn brooding glare of a captain or an aggrieved bowler. How many times does mid wicket scurry in only to see a mistimed drive bobble past and the batsmen take two. At the very least, the extra five metres he comes in each delivery, takes petrol from the tank. And, for the batsman it converts anxiety to perspiration, gets his innings under way safely and rotates the strike.

Our batsmen never look tired. They don't run their legs off. Yet the more twos we run the more we make the opposition run. And the more it accumulates. Don't forget. Sri Lanka are not a strong one-day fielding unit.

But they're smart. They stand on the 30m circle and we bash it to them. Why don't we run short singles - bring them in, push it past - toy with them more.



There are signs of improvement. The fielding used the circle really well in the game in Wellington. Singles are starting to become a part of the batsman's repertoire.

Cricket has long been embedded in summer culture. It's there in the garden, on the beach and it helps paint the roof. We've had hard times before. And we've the resilience to survive.