@Donsteppa yeah I was responding to posts about in our lifetimes so ignored Cowie.
It reflects our standing in the game. Hadlee and maybe Bond would get a mention in any sides discussion. Boult and Wagner - whoever. Not so much.
An all time NZ side would do ok against any opposition as you only have 11 on the field. By the time you get to our 3rd XI we are fucking toast. To be fair probably our seconds
@dogmeat said in Black Caps v Sri Lanka Test Series:
@Donsteppa yeah I was responding to posts about in our lifetimes so ignored Cowie.
It reflects our standing in the game. Hadlee and maybe Bond would get a mention in any sides discussion. Boult and Wagner - whoever. Not so much.
An all time NZ side would do ok against any opposition as you only have 11 on the field. By the time you get to our 3rd XI we are fucking toast. To be fair probably our seconds
No chance.
Well actually Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Zimbabwe and India would be keen. Everyone else has class fast bowlers that didn’t break all the time
@reprobate said in Black Caps v Sri Lanka Test Series:
@MN5 if it's an imaginary team then you can just imagine him uninjured.
In that case I’ll imagine Astle always gets 222, he’ll be first name on the sheet 
What a knock, I saw every ball
@MN5 said in Black Caps v Sri Lanka Test Series:
Do we blame him or are the next wave of guys just not really good enough ?
It's hard to know when not enough young players get enough of a crack
We keep rolling out these old players
O'Rourke looks with sticking with
Ravindra looks worth persevering with
How about giving other young players a chance?
@MN5 said in Black Caps v Sri Lanka Test Series:
@canefan said in Black Caps v Sri Lanka Test Series:
@nzzp said in Black Caps v Sri Lanka Test Series:
Preach, Dylan Cleaver
The Black Caps have, in the space of the decade, gone from one of the most innovative and nimble high-performance programmes in the world, to one that is utterly predictable. It is also one that is unsheltered and vulnerable to the global winds of change in cricket.
Stead dined out on the best group of talent we've ever had, and did little to identify and prepare the next group to take over. Probably not helped by administration and high performance talent development in NZC. Sounds like another code I know...
Do we blame him or are the next wave of guys just not really good enough ?
New Zealand have ( had ) what I’d consider just TWO genuine all time legends of the game. I’m sure I don’t need to mention their names here.
England/Australia/West Indies/India would have had maybe 15-20 guys at that level.
SA/Pakistan perhaps 10-15 each ?
Sri Lanka ? I could name three.
Other test playing nations probably none.
Maybe we just need to accept the natural order of things at test level at the moment.
As with the 2015 ABs, Kane's peak team have ruined our expectations for the foreseeable future
@Donsteppa said in Black Caps v Sri Lanka Test Series:
The ten year old cricketer in the house is still bemused at one team scoring 602/5, and the other only 88 in reply.
That thought is not age restricted, it is however indicative of a lack of Black caps supporter experience.
@Snowy said in Black Caps v Sri Lanka Test Series:
@Donsteppa said in Black Caps v Sri Lanka Test Series:
The ten year old cricketer in the house is still bemused at one team scoring 602/5, and the other only 88 in reply.
That thought is not age restricted, it is however indicative of a lack of Black caps supporter experience.
It was a parenting moment where I realised an early life WTC win may not have shown normal service as a Black Caps fan... (Luckily he'd spent most of the Bay Oval loss to Bangladesh playing cricket on the bank instead of watching 
)
A bit like those of us that experienced the mid-late 80's as our first NZ cricketing experience, and just assumed it was normal service until...
@Donsteppa He must have wondered why his Dad was always hiding behind a sofa whenever the cricket was on though...
TBH raising a child as a caps fan is bordering on abuse, look how we turned out. Years of unsuccessfully seeking emotional support on an internet forum is ahead of him.
@Snowy said in Black Caps v Sri Lanka Test Series:
@Donsteppa He must have wondered why his Dad was always hiding behind a sofa whenever the cricket was on though...
TBH raising a child as a caps fan is bordering on abuse, look how we turned out. Years of unsuccessfully seeking emotional support on an internet forum is ahead of him.
all that said, the Caps have brought me more joy than the ABs. I expect the ABs to win, so the 'joy' bar is high. I'm pleasantly surprised when the Craps get up in a Test ... so every single one gets celebrated. Quite different expectations ... although maybe they should be more similar
Depends when you grow up as Black Caps fan
Kids growing up with Black Caps and the success of 2015 - 2021 or so are going to do it tough
Similar to Wallabies fans who grew up during the golden era of 98 - 03.
I grew up watching them in the mid 90s, where we just got our arses handed to us by all and sundry, so this recent success has been extremely enjoyable. I can remember being happy when we didn't avoid a follow on and got to bat again, as watching Bryan Young maybe get a 50 was a lot better than watching our pop gun attack getting ground into the dust conceding 600/3.
On Stead, he was very much the right man at the right time when he took over. With Baz and Hess laying the ground work for our golden generation to excel, we just needed a steady hand to continue that on. He has had some wonderful results, but medium to long term, as some of our greats like Rosco and BJ retired, the Stead/Kane combination was never going to cut it as we needed to keep innovating and evolving with the new players coming in. Basically we have become far too conservative when in reality we need to be throwing caution to the wind a bit to put some of the top sides under more pressure. Resigning Stead to mid 2025 was very short sighted, that was the perfect chance to shake things up a bit but instead we've seen the decline continue.
The comments about our decline - golden ages etc prompted me to crunch some numbers
Surprisingly the current decade is, to date, our winningest ever. Although given we've lost our last 4 tests and are about to face India away that's set to change.
Three things stick out to me
How much more cricket we play since about the 90's, how many more wins we gather and the ongoing decline in drawn tests.
All are good trends. Plus our golden age of the 80's wasn't really all that golden. Winning 1-4 is pretty poor by modern standards although we were tough to beat. That's as I remember it. Helped by some doctored pitches at home. Either very green or roads depending on who we were facing.
Man the 90's were shite though.
@KiwiMurph said in Black Caps v Sri Lanka Test Series:
Depends when you grow up as Black Caps fan
Kids growing up with Black Caps and the success of 2015 - 2021 or so are going to do it tough
Similar to Wallabies fans who grew up during the golden era of 98 - 03.
Yes - in hindsight is good to have dealt with some adversity.
For example, the last Ranfurly Shield match played in Nelson (prior to last night) was also against Auckland. it was in 1991 while we were still Nelson Bays. We lost 76-0.
@dogmeat We also faced doctored pitches when playing away so whats so bad about producing a green top when you 100% get nothing other than a bunsen burner in India (for example)? Come to think of it the pitches at the Waca and The Gabba were always fiery and favouring the Aussies as well. It's been a fair while since we have seen a proper "green topper" in NZ with Hamilton, Napier, Eden Park when it was still being used and even the Basin being run fests (NZs infamous batting collapses notwithstanding) on mostly placid pitches.
Some of the stats for the 20s are padded with the never ending times Zimbabwe, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka (until recently of course!!!) were on the Black Caps fixture list.
A ten year old (ish) in the nineties:
@No-Quarter said in Black Caps v Sri Lanka Test Series:
watching our pop gun attack getting ground into the dust conceding 600/3.
and in 2024:
@Donsteppa said in Black Caps v Sri Lanka Test Series:
The ten year old cricketer in the house is still bemused at one team scoring 602/5
It's taken us a quarter of a century to improve by 2 wickets.
