New Zealand v Australia, 2nd Test, Christchurch, 8-12 March, 2024

Quite liked this brief report of the Black Knight quality presser from Stokes.

Wonder if they had a cup of tea or a beer with the hosts.

Probably not

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2024/mar/09/cricket-england-india-fifth-test-series-loss-ben-stokes

Woops wrong thread !

Still celebrating 3 out of 4 wins to the good guys in the footy.

Silly Brisbane.

Wickets, wickets, wickets, wickets, wickets, wickets, wickets.

Wicket seems to have flattened right out and has nothing for Elmer.

Looks like we might chasing 350+.

… and there goes Steve Watto, complete with standard review for a plumb lbw.

Lol… imploding now.

Smith is not an opener.

Jesus, what a revolting development.

When I looked in a while back we were facing 350+ but then Elmer struck.

"Sub-300 chase" I thought. Looked in again. 4 for fark-all.

Ugh, so my hopes re: Smudge as an opener were clearly folly. His crab walk and play across the line style cannot work at the top of the order. Ooze needs to be pensioned off. Marnus is in a career hole, and rest of our top order can't bat.

Ugh.

Matt Henry, with 9 wickets so far in the match, heading for MoM.

skully wrote:Wickets, wickets, wickets, wickets, wickets, wickets, wickets.

wickets for NZ ... I blame skully

So Aus 4-77 at Stumps, 202 still needed.

Seems unlikely we'll get close.

Well played Sheep, who rarely lay down these days.

skully wrote:So Aus 4-77 at Stumps, 202 still needed.

Seems unlikely we'll get close.

Well played Sheep, who rarely lay down these days.

Great fightback. Our brainless twerps in the middle order should cop it. I see Nepo Man’s average has dropped below 30.

Carey's missed catch late yesterday and

"Australia's hopes of a swift conclusion were dashed by Scott Kuggeleijn, who came out swinging and added a quickfire 44 to take the lead beyond 250, having been dropped on 2 by Labuschagne at slip"

after lunch today cost well over 100 runs and could easily cost us a berth in the WTC.

... and before anyone reminds me of the 10 catches Carey took, I remind myself of ex-keeper horrie's own words that keepers should be judged not on the catches they take, but on the ones they miss. That was a bad one.

My calcs say Carey missing Latham cost us roughly 20 runs. Handy but scarcely game-changing.

Not just about how many more runs he made the next day, is it?

Should have been having a crack at Mitchell as well, last night, under pressure.

Yeah all kinds of stuff MiGHT have happened. Lathem MIGHT have had his middle stump flattened with the next ball he faced.
..
.
.

And Zcarey might have caught that catch. Labuschagne might have caught huis. Dropping catches does matter.

Yes they do matter. But some seem to matter more than others, and which particular butter-fingered clown was responsible seems to be too big a factor in deciding whether a particular howler matters enough to be worth mentioning or not.

Tricky but oz could still make it. Pitch seems OK, and if they do win, they will all deserve a knighthood or the oz equivalent.
Arise Sir Travis of Head, Sir Mitch of Marsh, Sir Devereux the Smith et al.

Fred Nerk wrote:Yes they do matter. Some matter more than others: who is dropped, when they are dropped, and what happens afterwards for the dropped batsman being the most important factors.

fixed….

If someone were to drop Chris Martin or his equivalent three balls in a row, it probably would not matter, unless it were in the last over of a Test and NZ were 9 down. When someone drops Kane Williamson or Tom Latham, fifteen minutes before stumps, the opportunity to attack a new batsman and put the team under extra pressure is lost, the partnership has the potential to prosper into a new day and more runs are added to the chase target. You know this; it’s almost a Captain Obvious explanation. I’m not a Carey fan but I’d have made the same observation about that dropped catch if it had been dropped by Green, Head, Marsh or Smith (not rare these days) or Labuschagne (and did, regarding his drop of Kuggelthing). The Latham drop was just a bad drop at a bad time; and it cost us big time. Taken together with the later Marnus drop, there’s 100 runs (estimate) that we would not have had to make, and a series potentially halved rather than won. Our fielding is not what it was, with more catches going down behind the wicket and in the cordon than would ever have gone down 4-5 years ago.

No keeper is perfect, but we have a better keeper in the Shield ranks (Jimmy P) who would likely score just as many runs without the comedy show behind the sticks.

You blew it with the 'comedy show behind the sticks'.

Well, we have a different perspective on that, clearly. For mine, he has always kept like a footballer.

been raining, play to start at 10am AEDT

maybe ... more rain coming, apparently