McCullum considers giving up the gloves

[Chewie]

^ That or Guptill instead of Williamson and Young instead of Hopkins. Depends how Kane does in the triangular series I suppose.

 

[War]

Fantastic, exactly what I wanted him to do if he was to ever give up the gloves. It's been pretty obvious over the past year or so he's not been 100 percent (well not really but he's been making noises). It would make no sense IMO to continue wicket keeping in test cricket but not in the shorter forms of the game, plus it would weaken our one day team a lot more IMO.

He's already said he wants to bat at three for New Zealand in test cricket so I'm guessing we'll see him bat there right away.

1.McIntosh
2.Watling
3.McCullum
4.Taylor
5.Ryder
6.Williamson
7.Vettori
8.Hopkins


We'll see that batting line-up IMO in the next test series New Zealand play. Daniel Vettori said sometime last season that he would have much rathered moved to seven but with McCullum in the team he would have been wasted at eight, Hopkins though wont be. Both Ryder and Williamson bring capable 5th bowling options should really give this New Zealand team a pretty good balance

Looks potentially good indeed. But why no Guptil?.

Although presuming # 9-11 will be the 3 quicks. Thus having 3 quicks + Vettori as your main bowlers. I'm not so sure about Ryder/Williamson doing 5th bowler duties in tests TBH, especially with Ryders injury record.

 

[pcfan123]

Which is why you need Guptill, he is a wicket taker occasionally. Ryder, Guptill, Taylor together can make an ok 5th bowling option

 

[Howsie]

Looks potentially good indeed. But why no Guptil?.

Although presuming # 9-11 will be the 3 quicks. Thus having 3 quicks + Vettori as your main bowlers. I'm not so sure about Ryder/Williamson doing 5th bowler duties in tests TBH, especially with Ryders injury record.

Basically because Guptill isn't one of New Zealand's top six batsmen, with Ryder finally coming back and Williamson getting the call up he should be quite far down the pecking order. As for the Ryder/Williamson 5th bowler combination, yeah it's not ideal but what else can New Zealand do? We just don't have a genuine all-rounder anymore and with McCullum giving up the gloves we can't afford to have Vettori at six and Hopkins or Young at seven.

Howsie added 2 Minutes and 40 Seconds later...

Which is why you need Guptill, he is a wicket taker occasionally. Ryder, Guptill, Taylor together can make an ok 5th bowling option

Williamson's a better bowler then Guptill though.

 

[Chewie]

I wouldn't dismiss Williamson' bowling that quickly. Guptill's bowling is not as good as Williamson's, and his batting in the longer form is worse as well. The only genuine all-rounder we have is probably Franklin and he's moving more towards the Williamson/Ryder bowling situation as well.

 

[CG123]

I'm pretty much in agreement with the line-up Howsie proposed:

"1.McIntosh
2.Watling
3.McCullum
4.Taylor
5.Ryder
6.Williamson
7.Vettori
8.Hopkins"

I would like to see them persevere with Guptill, but maybe just give him a break from test cricket and let him gain some form back in the shorter formats.

It would be stupid if they tried tweaking the opening combination again, they should lock in McIntosh and Watling for at least another six months.

Not sure if Williamson is ready for test cricket just ATM. I'd like to see how he handles maybe 10/15 ODI's before he plays test cricket.

I'd prefer Hopkins over Young, but I'm not too sure on what those South African dudes are like. Hopkins has a FC average of 35, so if he can convert that to say 28/29/30 he would be more than useful down at eight.

I think Vettori should be at seven at the highest, six just seems a bit too high because if he fails there would be little resistance below him.

 

[riz7khan12]

No.8 should be a spot for a bowling all-rounder like tuffey not for hopkins/young, i think they might go with watling keeping in tests for the near future anyway.

 

[CG123]

The problem with that is that our middle-lower order would go:

6. Vettori
7. Keeper (not proven at the international level)
8. Tuffey

That's a very weak lower-middle order.

People say Vettori should go up the order because he preforms so well, but the moment you take McCullum and Vettori out of 7/8 where they average like 35 and 40 respectively, and replace them with a keeper and Tuffey who'll probably average 25 and 15 respectively you've already lost an average of 35 runs which is pretty much a whole batsmen.

I don't mind putting Vettori up to six, but then you need to put some other players who are going to average 35 each at 7 and 8 to actually improve our order, otherwise there's no point.

To sum up what I'm saying, if you keep Vettori further down we'll be able to play an extra batting AR above him which well help keep the overall average of our side up, but when you put him up to six the overall batting average of our 11 players is going to drop dramatically.

And then there's the fact that we need to be able to take 20 wickets...

 

[riz7khan12]

but making watling the keeper would fix that problem that way we could play williamson/mccullum at 7 and play elliot or guptill as a specialist batsman, while keeping tuffey as the 3rd/4th seamer depending on the pitch; nathan mccullum could fit in well at 8 too.

 

[CG123]

Yeah, maybe in the future Watling could keep, but keeping and opening in tests is very demanding for a young player.

 

[Howsie]

I'm pretty much in agreement with the line-up Howsie proposed:

"1.McIntosh
2.Watling
3.McCullum
4.Taylor
5.Ryder
6.Williamson
7.Vettori
8.Hopkins"

I would like to see them persevere with Guptill, but maybe just give him a break from test cricket and let him gain some form back in the shorter formats.

It would be stupid if they tried tweaking the opening combination again, they should lock in McIntosh and Watling for at least another six months.

Not sure if Williamson is ready for test cricket just ATM. I'd like to see how he handles maybe 10/15 ODI's before he plays test cricket.

I'd prefer Hopkins over Young, but I'm not too sure on what those South African dudes are like. Hopkins has a FC average of 35, so if he can convert that to say 28/29/30 he would be more than useful down at eight.

I think Vettori should be at seven at the highest, six just seems a bit too high because if he fails there would be little resistance below him.

And end up like Neil Broom?

Howsie added 2 Minutes and 14 Seconds later...

but making watling the keeper would fix that problem that way we could play williamson/mccullum at 7 and play elliot or guptill as a specialist batsman, while keeping tuffey as the 3rd/4th seamer depending on the pitch; nathan mccullum could fit in well at 8 too.

Kamran Akmal, think of him when you think of playing Watling as a batsmen/keeper. He's part-time at best.

 

[CG123]

And end up like Neil Broom?

IIRC Broom was selected in the ODI side on the back of his FC form, which was just stupid.
Of course if Williamson fails in those ODI matches, I wouldn't bring him into the test side as he probably wouldn't be ready.
Broom only has a List A S/R of 79, yet for some reason he's been playing as a lower order hitter.
Williamson and Broom are two different scenarios, Williamson has shown great OD form at domestic level, while Broom was never a big hitter at DOM level and they have been trying to play him as one at the INT level so he was always going to fail.
Broom is a fail and always will be, while Williamson is six years younger and has a much better DOM record, so I highly highly doubt he will end up like Broom.

 

[Howsie]

IIRC Broom was selected in the ODI side on the back of his FC form, which was just stupid.
Of course if Williamson fails in those ODI matches, I wouldn't bring him into the test side as he probably wouldn't be ready.
Broom only has a List A S/R of 79, yet for some reason he's been playing as a lower order hitter.
Williamson and Broom are two different scenarios, Williamson has shown great OD form at domestic level, while Broom was never a big hitter at DOM level and they have been trying to play him as one at the INT level so he was always going to fail.
Broom is a fail and always will be, while Williamson is six years younger and has a much better DOM record, so I highly highly doubt he will end up like Broom.

Three one day internationals outweigh two years of heavy domestic scoring?

The reason I bring up Neil Broom is that the selectors did the exact same thing with him that you want the selectors to do with Williamson, they gave him 15-20 ODI games and then decided he wasn't good enough to play test cricket on the back of it. While you can sit there and say "he's younger, has a better record etc etc" the exact same thing could happen, Williamson may have to come into this one day team batting at six or seven and seeing as he's no late hitter he might do just as bad as Broom has done attempting it. I have a major problem when selectors do this type of thing, you should never judge a player going on different forms of the game, Martin Guptill's another good example of this.

 

[CG123]

Three one day internationals outweigh two years of heavy domestic scoring?

The reason I bring up Neil Broom is that the selectors did the exact same thing with him that you want the selectors to do with Williamson, they gave him 15-20 ODI games and then decided he wasn't good enough to play test cricket on the back of it. While you can sit there and say "he's younger, has a better record etc etc" the exact same thing could happen, Williamson may have to come into this one day team batting at six or seven and seeing as he's no late hitter he might do just as bad as Broom has done attempting it. I have a major problem when selectors do this type of thing, you should never judge a player going on different forms of the game, Martin Guptill's another good example of this.

Not sure where you get three one day internationals from, I said give him 10 - 15 over the next summer, if he doesn't do so well you can bring him back into the DOM level for one season, and then next season (2011/2012) he'll still only be 21 and hopefully the extra year of DOM cricket would of done him a world of good.

I don't see any room for him to bat at six/seven with the likes of Elliot, Styris, Vettori, Hopkins all going for those spots.

The only place I see them playing him is at three ahead of Guptill, or when McCullum or Ryder aren't playing.

My point with Broom is he just looks all at sea when he bats. I've never been a fan of him, infact I'd go as far as saying he has been the worst selection IMO over the past year. (I know someone is going to post a worse one now)

Yes I agree with you to some extent that he shouldn't be discarded from test cricket if he fails at ODI cricket, but is what I'm saying is he's still 19 so if you bring him and in and give him a taste of ODI cricket and he doesn't do so well, you can still drop him back to DOM cricket and one or two years down the track he'll still ONLY be 21 and probably be a much improved player.

On the other hand there is an equal change he'll play great and not get dropped back to DOM cricket, which is what I'm hoping for, and I assume you're hoping for.

 

[Howsie]

Personally, I reckon he'll make his test debut on the tour of Bangladesh. So I doubt we'll have to worry about any of this actually happening