New Zealand v Australia

Okay so it seems as if the first ever Twenty20 international is upon us. It will be held shortly between New Zealand and Australia. Well actually i say the first ever but its only the first ever as far as the men's game is concerned. There have been Women's Twenty20 international matches and they seem to be quite a success so far though most of the women's circuit did have reservations about the longer format of the game due to stamina and stregth disadvantages from men so maybe this was the best option all round?

I'm not really sure how i feel about this yet. I wasn't entirely keen on the idea og Twenty20 when it first came about in the domestic English game but it did apparently draw in a lot of new and mainly younger viewers and for the expansion of the game i think this is key. Cricket generally doesn't get a lot of good publicity as far as its excitement and interest goes, in fact quite the inverse. But when this version of the game came about it, the reaction was very positive.

Depending on how this goes it could set a precedent for many more international matches like this and possibly even tournaments like they do with normal 55 and now 50 over limited matches like the World Cup and ICC trophy. I thinkthis may reflect a little on the development and evolution of the game and how maybe the tollerance of certain partsof the game have now disintergrated.

I still have a few reservations like how far will this go and will be start having those sort of super 6's tournaments where we only get 5 overs per side and that sort of stuff and maybe we'll start introducing things from baseball like possible run outs at both ends within the same dismissal and then possibly catching somebody in the outfield and then running out the other man? Now also there's a time limit on how long the next batsman must take to get to the crease and how quickly the overs should be bowled etc etc but it  does have the new elements of the game that certainly do come out in a positive way. For example it seems to have taken away that sort of dull boring middle part of limited overs games which are 50 overs long in which batsmen just keep paddling the ball down to long off or the sweeper for singles and the part-time bit part bowlers just seem to bowl gentle "off the pace" deliveries and it also seems to have taken away the problem of that ridiculously dirty white ball which disintergrates towards the end of the innings.

I'm however still not sure as to how this all going to turn out yet. I think we have to wait and see as to how this match turns out andsee how it then develops and progresses. I think waiting and seeing is about all we can do at the moment, this stage of the game is still in its infancy and we all have to be careful both; not to overdo it; and not to disgard it completely - that of course to those who think it should remain a plausable version of the game.

As for this match itself i think the Australians will be odds on favorites however i think that if there is any one side that is capable of competing with them in One Day cricket it is New Zealand and they are by miles the second best side in the world.

So what do you guys think? Firstly of the match itself but then also what of the format of the game and how much it should be played and at what level?

Something that will be interesting, especially about this game with all the rotation that Australia have been doing is what the team selection will be and how will itfair to their Test and 50 over teams? Will the start of this shortened style of the game bring about a wholesale change in team selection and will there now be a true clear line defining Test and One Day players and will Test and One Day teams now look more and more different? Will they now have completely different management? Will teams who have central contract systems now offer different contracts to different players for different and or only some of the different versions of the game?

What do you guys thiink?

Yes it's cricket for beginners isn't it? A bit of fun to entertain families and introduce youngsters to the game. And nobody can argue with the attendances. But administrators have a habit of killing the geese that lay such golden eggs. It's fine for 3 weeks or so in the middle of the season, but if they start to reduce the Championship programme to make room for more Twenty20 games that will be the beginning of the end as far as I'm concerned.

I'm interested to see how the Aus-NZ game goes and I'll be following it online tomorrow, if I'm up in time!

Well i assume you are in refferance to the domestic game in Great Britain? i think thatis the only of the majoy leagues around the world to order cuts in the game and the length of the season. It is naturally drifting in that direction anyway as the limited overs game used to be 60 overs and then 55, it is now at 50 and the domestic leagues around the world have (in some places) already cut it down to 45 and now the English country game will cut it down to 40 overs for the season forthcoming. The season itself seems somewhat long but only due to the fact that first class lasts 4 days. The limited overs version of the game is up in a day but the longer versionof the game only permits a game a week most of the time. So say if there was only 12 matches in a (regular) season (excluding play offs etc etc) that would still take up a minimum of 3 months would it not? Then on top of that you have to add in the limited over game which you either play around it (consecutively) or concurrently (at the same time) but that would require certain players who play in both forms of the game to choose how and where they play. Its a complicated situation and the boards and associations of the national leagues involved then have to decide if a player can say for example play in a limited overs game and then join into the longer version of the game and both bat and bowl and not just play as a substitute who can only field if both games started on the same day. It can get very complicated but the reason for that more than anything is because both the longerand shorter versions of the domestic game run concurrently and the only real solution is to have the season played consecutively, i.e. one after another, its the onlyway to sort this out. On top of all of that you of course have to factor in internationals inbetween and at the same time which adds more unknows into the equation. So from being a linear and simultaneous and then quadratic equation this has now become at least a quintic equation with more variables and unknown and now a variable unknown and the only solution is to take out possibly one or two of the unknows bringing it down solvable through simple solution or make one or more of the variables a constant to be able to work around having figured out what it is. Sorry if nobody understood a word of that. Let me put it a bit more simply, franchises  don't know of how many of the days of the longer games which are going to be used and if there are any free how many there will be - a game could go on for all of the days available. They also don't do the scheduling so they don't know if they have to play both versions of the game at the same time and who they are playing when so they inevitebly need more players and more specialist players. They then don't know if and when those players may be needed on international duty and as they are sub contract and clause contract to their national board or associaton before they are to the franchise (the players that is,if it is that they have a central contract) then the players have fulfil their obligation to their country. Also the franchise may be from the country that the player will represent in which case they will have no choice but to release him as the franchise is under the regulation of the country's board or association. So you either have to have a fixed international schedule of who plays who when but that will never happen because apart from the fact that within a 5 year period a nation has to play every other nation in the respective version of the game at least once and every 10 years play every nation has to play every other nation in the respective version of the game both at home and on the road the scheduling is pretty much free to subject of prefferance of the respective nation's boards or associations (so long as they comply within their tier system).  So for every nation's domestic agenda to be fulfilled at the request of international cricket being indetified beforehand is just feesable or plausable as its just not possible to keep both and or other parties happy at the same time. I.e. what may be good and convenient for one may not be good for the other at that time, so to find a common agreement for amount and for time in each and every situation to accomodate the domestic agenda is just not on. It just won't work and there will be problems resulting in losses of mass tournaments and series and we haven't even had to take into account the way the seasons and weather works in different ways in different places around the world yet....Another way is to have what is common everywhere now in which you play around the international schedule as well as possible with the nation's trying their best to accomodate the domestic game which is the situation at the moment. Or the third sort of way is to try and narrow all of the fields, (which is what we are all moving to, slowly but surely), i.e. lower the number of international matches and shorten the domestic season so that even though you still have an insoluble equation you have cut out a lot of the unknows so that even though you do have variables they have to fit in a smaller quantity of unknows so that the outcome can be correct even if there are more than one solution (not neccassarily the same as quadratic when one is positive and the other is negative) but fairly similar. Simply put, a variable unknown that is so developed and advanced with so many sub roots and sub equations that many different solutions can be percieved to be correct. So in essence the only way around this that seems to be workable is to shorten the seasons everywhere to make the whole situation managable more than anything and to keep the domestic games alive.

Twenty20 is not to make money or revive the interest in the domestic  game but to accomodate all parties in a huge schedule in a bid to save the entire game. I said above that the 50 over game is not broke so it shouldn't be fixed and this is what i meant by that (which may not have been understood clearly then), this is a system that is spiraling out of control and may well be broken in a fewyears and not work at all if it keeps going on at the same rate. Twenty20 is part of the solution to fixing it and that will include a complete and total overhaul of the entire system.

Many people may not agree that this is the way to go but something does have to be done or the entire system will go under shortly.

See i do agree with most of what you say JP but i still predict a different outcome...

That started off badly on my part, i didn't bother to check and just assumed it was a 3 match series. My bad, i apologise. That does kind of throw a somewhat different light on the matter...

Yeah i completely agree but i think it may have slightly more agressive effect anyway due to the fact that yes it is New Zealand that they are playing but also in the series directly prior to this the two dies met and it finished a draw, on Australian soil. If that hadn't have happened i think the complacency factor may well have overwhelmed the Australians and more than anything because its New Zealand they may well have even lost the series.

Well i think Ricky Ponting has done fairly well as of late too, from his great performance for the charity match in mid January all the way to the Twenty20 performance he has performed pretty consistantly, just not brilliantly like we know he can at his best. Michael Clarke did do well but i'm not sure he will do as well if he goes back down the order. That is of course if Hayden comes back in and he really has been in poor touch and he needs a big score to get him back on track. Though having said that he still averages 55 in Test cricket and his average has just only now dipped below 40 in One Day cricket so i think it may just be a question of confidence and he may get his stride back easily enough with one or two gutsy gritty innings if he can sort of battle it out if you get what i mean. The one positiont that looks really and truly worrying is that of the lowest order specialist batsmen. Andrew Symmonds should do well enough but he would be in the side as an all rounder. I think it would be a big mistake to throw Simon Katich in there at number 7 or something like that and i don't really have any confidence in him to perform at the highest level. Darren Lehmann has truly left a big set of shoes to fill the same way Mark waugh did when he left the team. Also the other thing that is slightly worrying is the situation with the premier spinner...i hate to really be harsh but Hogg is a waste of space and now with no Lehmann there is nobody really who can bowl a good 7 or 8 overs of controlled spin to slow down the run rate, possibly speed up the over rate and maybe even pick up a wicket or 2. Michael Clarke can bowl but i don't think he will be able to produce more than 4 or 5 overs at the most. Stauart MaCgill coming back would be a good option i think or maybe blood Nathan Hauritz into the team now? I think there should be a couple of changes made to this team.

Have to think about this now. I would still say that it is unlikely that New Zealand will win a match though the thing is say Australia go 3 up in the series you can certainly then see them sliiping up seeing as they've won the series. I'll still go for a banker of all 5 going to Australia.

Interesting start to the series - McGrath with a terrific bowling spell, crowd trouble forcing a delay as well as Vettori and umpire Bowden having a difference of opinion and having to be separating by Stephen Fleming.

Certainly, Australia look like they've won whilst playing poorly but it seems as if they had the best of the umpiring decisions - Hayden was apparently 'out' twice before his 30s.

Just reading the match report; Gilchrist was standing up to McGrath and Kasprowicz, stumping McMillan from a ball timed at 136kph. Now that must take some doing.

Its still possible that there may be a 4&1 result if say the Australians sure up the series and then make wholesale changes for the final game or final 2 games and the Kwiwi's may win the odd match. But yes it is always (or almost always) the case that if a winning side plays badly against another side that doesn't do so well in the statistical department as far as their record(s) go then 99% of the time the winning team (usually the champions) come out on top. According to most (though i don't neccessarily agree) its what makes champions and championship winning teams, playing badly and still getting positive results as if the team was playing at their peak and at their very best which took them to the pinacle to where they were either crowned champions or playing at their best.

Just some team news ahead of the third One Day International in the series, it looks as if Matthew Hayden may be out inured with a possible dislocated shoulder after taking a catch to dismiss Chris Cairns where he landed somewhat awkwardly. His shoulder is currently in a sling and he may need to rest it for a few days, possibly even a week or so. Quite unfortunate, he gets himself back in form andjust as he does so he manages to pick up an injury. New Zealand also ringing in the changes with Michael Papps set to come back into the side after being left out for a year or so, replacing the out of form Matthew Sinclair.