Being a New Zealand cricket fan is, more often than not, an unrewarding and unfulfilling occupation. Being a supporter of a team also means that you tend to think that your players are better than they are. Sometimes, you need to hear their qualities appraised by an outsider, someone less blinded by largely meaningless words like talent and potential. This could be from the Aussie commentating team (unfortunately they tend to be very bullish about New Zealand’s players, prospects and performances) or from a fellow cricket fan. As a New Zealand supporter, I’m excited by the potential of McCullum, Guptill, Williamson, Taylor and Ryder, but as classy and as talented as this group is, they are still too inconsistent a group to pose a threat to top-class bowling attacks. As much as I might rave about Taylor’s cover drives, another person can point out his poor shot-selection and his mania at throwing his wicket away to ill-conceived slog sweeps.
Which brings me back to being a New Zealand supporter. New Zealand is always a team that has battled against the odds, often performing well as a team, where the whole is much bigger than the parts. However, one comment I read recently was about how New Zealand cricket has only produced one great player. Surely, this can’t be the case, I thought. How can a proud sporting nation such as New Zealand, in its biggest summer code, have only produced one great player in 80 years of test cricket?
Top left: New Zealand's only undeniably great player, Sir Richard Hadlee. Three others who are close, bottom left, Martin Crowe, Top right, Shane Bond and Bottom Right, Chris Cairns.
Sir Richard Hadlee is, of course, that one player and a mighty player he was as well. But surely, others New Zealanders qualify as greats of the game. Surely, at least one other player qualifies. First of all, I started with the time honoured equations; a great batsmen averages 50 or more, a great bowler under 25. Sadly, no batsmen in New Zealand cricket who has played more than 20 innings has averaged more than 50. Martin Crowe has the highest average of 45, and for a decade (1985-1994), he was considered one of the world’s premier batsmen (he averaged 54 during this period). He would come close to being considered a great batsmen but I feel he’s just below the group of Richards, Border and Miandad, the great batsmen of his era. Glenn Turner is the next best Kiwi batsmen, averaging 44 and the owner of 100 first class centuries. However, a lot of his finest work was done in first-class cricket and he missed six years of international cricket at the peak of his powers after clashes with administration (ironically given his hard nosed approach to player management during his stints as the coach of the Black Caps). Bert Sutcliffe was a majestic player and played in a weak New Zealand team but his average of 40 qualifies him only as a New Zealand great, not a great of the game.
On the bowling front, three New Zealand bowlers average fewer than 25, Hadlee being one. The others are two potential greats who both have question marks beside their names. The first is Shane Bond, New Zealand’s best quick bowler since Hadlee, a bowler good enough to have the third best strike rate of all bowlers in tests, (he got a wicket every 38 balls) and the seventh best strike rate of all time in ODIs. Unfortunately, injuries tarnish his legacy and his career probably falls into one of unfulfilled. I have no doubt that if he could have played 15-20 more tests that his status of all-time great would have been cemented. The other is Jack Cowie, whose career was interrupted by the Second World War, a player who only played 9 tests but played them outstandingly well (45 wickets with a strike rate of 45 and an average of 22). He was praised at the time as an outstanding bowler, and in the words of Wisden “Had he been an Australian, he might have been termed a wonder of the age”. Another New Zealander of the 1920s and 30s, Clarrie Grimmett, did decide to become an Australian and playing for that country, he became a great, match winning, leg-spin bowler. He is a great New Zealand player. Sadly, he never played for his country of birth, nor in fact was his talent ever recognized in New Zealand. It would be a stretch to claim him for New Zealand.
So far, in trying to find another great player from New Zealand, all I have managed to find is one batsmen, who is maybe a great but more probably just a very good batsmen, two bowlers with unfulfilled careers abbreviated by war or injury and one bowler who turned his back on New Zealand.
So lets look at all rounders. All rounders have a special place in New Zealander’s hearts. Being a fighting cricketing country, one more dependent on grit more than ability, we have often had players who can bat and bowl, reliant on them to do the jobs that other countries would leave to specialists. Apart from Hadlee, three all-rounders come to mind, John Reid, Chris Cairns and Daniel Vettori. Reid was a giant of the New Zealand game but his average in both batting and bowling of 33 shows someone who was competent at both skills but a true great at neither. Vettori is someone similar; he has shouldered New Zealand’s bowling attack for more than a decade and has done well with the bat. However, one feels that he while he dominates the game in New Zealand, he is not a great of the international game. Cairns overcome the folk hero legacy of his father and was for a time, the world’s premier allrounder, one capable of shredding attacks and also capable of bowling on a regular basis, wicket taking balls (his strike rate was an outstanding 53). His talent was so obvious that it felt like he had underachieved. His stats (batting average 33, bowling average 29) suggest otherwise and are comparable to Kapil Dev (batting average 31, bowling average 29) or even Botham’s (batting average 33, bowling average 28) and better than Flintoff’s (Batting average 31, bowling average 32). Cairns maybe has a claim to be one of the game’s great all-rounders.
This started as an exercise to try and show that New Zealand has produced more than one great player. Martin Crowe is a maybe, Cowie and Bond are both would have beens and that Cairns is a should have been but is not recognized as such. The one other definite great New Zealand born player played for Australia. So the question remains, why has New Zealand only produced one unquestionably great player? Do all the best athletes play rugby, leaving the scraps of the sporting gene pool for cricket? Is it because of the temperamental nature of our climate, the poor pitches that have blighted the first class game (thankfully, this has improved over the past decade). Is it just representative of our small population base? Is it lower expectations? In New Zealand cricket, the equation for greatness would seem to be batting average higher than 40 and for bowling, an average of 30 and below, much lower than for other countries. I would like one of Taylor, Ryder or Williamson to make the step up to greatness. The talent is there but is there that drive that you see in other countries? All I can do is hope and disregard 80 years of evidence that points to these players not becoming greats of the game.
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