A one day off for the Kiwi cricketers

The train to Canberra couldn’t get its door shut, so we left an hour late. By the time I walked into the steam bath of Manuka Oval for the PM’s XI against New Zealand One Day festival match, the visitors were in their 40th over and had scored only 200 runs.

Brendan McCullum was cruising along, taking singles and hitting the occasional four.

When he reached his century, a knowledgeable chap next to me told the world: “Why applaud? He’s taken 48 overs to score a ton. Too slow.”

And an over later when McCullum was dropped, the chap was at it again: “That’s the way. Let him stay in. He’s going so slow he’ll win the game for us.”

Given the intense heat, the New Zealand score of 271 seemed to set up a reasonable chase, I thought.

But in the end the PM’s XI got the runs rather easily, with Justin Langer playing a masterful hand for his 72, while the Tasmanian George Bailey, who was dropped twice, the first time in his 30s, batted aggressively and intelligently to go through to 107.

The Prime Minister had instructed Langer that the four successive victories by New Zealand against PM XIs had to stop. And Langer responded with shrewd captaincy in the field and shrewd batting at the crease.

One of the Australian selectors, Jamie Cox, made a special trip to Canberra to see Phillip Hughes and, presumably, Michael Klinger bat. Klinger looked neat without being a stand-out stroke player. He got out early to a failed pulled shot.

Hughes, who looked tiny (rather like Tendulkar), played attractively, especially with his array of cuts shots, before being comprehensively bowled with off-spinner Jeetan Patel’s second ball.

if you were mounting a contest between Klinger and Hughes you’d have to say that Hughes looked more likely to make the transition to international cricket.

The New Zealanders were clearly affected by the heat.

They dropped catches and fielded lethargically. Even youngsters like the impressive 19 year-old Trent Boult looked exhausted after a couple of overs. But there was enough in the bowling of Daniel Vettori and Patel, and the batting of McCullum and Ross Taylor, to suggest that if the team is not over-awed, as it was during the recent Test series, they’ll present a good challenge to an Australian XI that has been knocked off its perch by the South Africans.

Two kids near me were shouting at each other towards the end of the match. “Harry!’ yelled out one of the kids. “Why you’re gonna support the New Zealanders?”

“Because they’re the best,” his pimply-faced friend replied.

This is being a trifle generous.

The New Zealanders are not the best, or anywhere near it. But on their day they could give the Australians a good run for their money in the Chappell-Hadlee series.

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