Martin Devlin: Black Caps Tour inexcusable and embarrassing

Martin Devlin: We Need to Talk 15th January

Disaster. Utter disaster. The worst, most shambolic, disappointing cricket tour by the Black Caps I can ever remember.

The recent record-setting (for all the wrong reasons), pants-down performances
in Australia have destroyed everything good the team has recently achieved.

It wasn't just the defeats, comprehensive in all three tests, but the manner of the losses which really hurt. We were embarrassed.

And apart from the raucous crowds, which represented New Zealand and us as sports fans in the best possible way, there is/was nothing nice to say about any other aspect of it at all.

Let us not paper over any cracks here.

Reputations, including the skipper's, have been forever tarnished by batting that was inept at best and "fraidy-cat" at worst. To fail in six consecutive innings is inexcusable.

And I've asked myself if I'm being too harsh, if it's a case of back-to-work-blues, have I come back from holidays in a bad mood? No I haven't.

Alternatively, is this something that's been and gone already? Are people well over it? Is it time to forgive and forget? Is it a waste of time regurgitating something as horrible as those three tests ultimately were? No, no, no and a loud, resounding NO!

We should never forget the capitulation it really was because it's only by acknowledging it, owning it, feeling as awfully uncomfortable about it as we do, that we might collectively prevent it ever happening again.

Now, as a lifelong Black Caps fan, you do get used to some floggings. Bowled out for 45 in South Africa under Brendon McCullum springs immediately to mind, but it's the consecutive thrashings that really hurt this time. We were whacked inside four days in EVERY test. We won maybe one session the whole time. We bowled on every one of the 12 days played.

They absolutely took the piddle out of us and by the end of the Sydney debacle were glad to see us gone - and for good reason. Never have we sent a team to Australia with so much hope, so much expectation, to be so utterly demoralised.

And, apart from the numbers we brought through the gate, why would they ever invite
us back? Gimme one good reason. Because it's certainly not anything we might promise
to bring via red ball and willow bat.