David Leggat: Strange days when the best get a rest

Remember those days when New Zealand's premier sports teams fielded THE best players. Full stop. No messing about.

It actually wasn't that long ago. But Graham Henry and John Bracewell could clear their throats and pay homage to Bob Dylan. Times certainly are a-changin'.

First we have top-tier All Blacks stood down - sorry, rotated - on what once would have been one of the premier rugby assignments, a Grand Slam.

In their places were put players the All Black selectors wanted to assess with the 2007 World Cup in mind.

For generations of All Blacks it must have seemed like heresy, and there'd be plenty of coughing and spluttering and turning in graves over that.

But we are told that's the way it's done in these enlightened times, and in any case, the All Blacks had a pretty decent year, so doubters can take a running jump.

Now we have New Zealand's most successful one-day batsman, Nathan Astle, told to take a break and go back and brush up his game.

In his place, the national cricket selectors are getting a look at two newcomers, Jamie How and Peter Fulton, against Sri Lanka and are putting a massive degree of faith in the out-of-touch Hamish Marshall.

At least Marshall finally made a contribution in Wellington yesterday, his 50 putting a bit of substance into a lame New Zealand batting effort at the Cake Tin.

It was his first half-century since last February. In the 14 innings between then and yesterday, Marshall's best effort was 28.

In the same period, Astle had hit 423 runs at 35, with a century and a couple of 50s along the way.

To take that a stage further, Astle, having got a late reprieve, hit 90 to carry New Zealand home in a tight finish against the Sri Lankans in Christchurch this week, but the message remained in place.

Now let's make this clear: Astle isn't just New Zealand's premier ODI batsman by a narrow margin. He has scored 15 centuries, nine more than the next-best, captain Stephen Fleming.

Is Astle being punished for not being as good as he should be, as opposed to being measured on the same terms as his rivals?

It's roughly the equivalent of the All Black panel telling Richie McCaw to skip a batch of tests and pop back to the NPC and sharpen up before the World Cup.

And the reason for all this odd carry-on by the panels of our two major sports?

World Cup year is just round the corner.

Much international sport these days seems to operate on a four-year cycle, where anything is fair game for sacrificing at the altar of the quadrennial competition.

The cricketers are preparing for a month in the Caribbean early next year; rugby has its jamboree in France towards the end of the year.

Short of him completely losing the plot in the next few months, bank on 34-year-old Astle being in the West Indies.

Still, setting aside the odd World Cup minnow like East Africa or Canada, when was the last time New Zealand could afford to tell its best batsman ahead of a series against good-quality opposition, "Take a spell, pal. We don't need you right now"?

Astle's probably pondering the injustice of it all at Eden Park today, and aiming to restate his case for a swift return, when Canterbury play Auckland in the State Shield.

Strange the fates that can befall the best.

Take Nadia Petrova, world No 7 in women's tennis and top seed at this week's ASB Classic. All week, she'd seemed a dead cert to make today's final in Auckland, only to pull an adductor muscle at the start of the third set of her semifinal against Frenchwoman Marion Bartoli.

So Bartoli, the sixth seed, meets eighth-seeded Russian Vera Zvonareva for the big cheque.

Which just goes to show seedings count for little at the start of the tennis year.

Fernando Gonzalez, world No 11 and top seed for the Heineken Open starting on Monday, you have been warned.