If batting, bowling and fielding are equally the key cricket disciplines, there can be no doubt that if New Zealand is to peg the current Test series back to 1-1, it is their bowling which must deliver the result.
With another good Adelaide Oval batting wicket in prospect, and key batsmen in good form, the Black Caps shouldn’t have too much trouble making enough runs to win the match – assuming their bowling can restrict Australia to less.
Six-hundred-plus runs in the first innings in Perth, and around 300 in each innings in Brisbane is not the indicator of a batting list about to be ripped to shreds by a Mitchell Johnson-less Australian attack.
There are questions to be answered sure; Mitchell Starc with a pink ball and one, or maybe even two new Australian bowlers to be introduced. But one imagines that all of Mike Hesson and Brendan McCullum’s attention has been focused squarely on raising the performance of their own bowling attack up to true Test level.
There are similarities with the short England series earlier this year – grossly deficient preparation and acclimatisation flowing into some atrocious first Test bowling, followed by gradual improvement as the bowlers warmed to their work.
Australia’s second innings in Perth was marked by the first spell of concerted pressure, indeed the only spell of any consistent pressure, applied by the New Zealand bowlers in the series so far.
While in no way suggesting that this is a precursor to a sudden rout – that would be the biggest turnaround since Pride of Penzance turned from provincial Victorian handicapper into Melbourne Cup superstar – it is a sign that the proverbial worm is at least rolling onto its side, if not beginning to turn.
Tim Southee was patently underdone in Brisbane, but there were signs in Perth that control of his outswinger is starting to return. He even got some nice reverse swing happening on the fifth day.
What the New Zealand attack needs – as well as the obvious 20 wickets – is to be able to bowl more maidens, and ratchet Australia’s run rate down to three per over, instead of the current going rate around five per over.
Doug Bracewell seems capable of this, finding a nice stump-to-stump line in Perth, and he has the strength and stamina to do this in long spells. He is a fighter, understands what Test cricket is about, and has an important role to play in this match.
Matt Henry bowled one good spell in Perth and also will be better for the experience. He didn’t however demand selection for the third Test, and with Neil Wagner taking five wickets with the pink ball on Saturday this sets up an interesting selection challenge.
Wagner is a great competitor who has a knack of bowling wicket balls – even in benign batting conditions. He also seems to have a good handle on the pink ball. It will be tempting to give him a shot, although at this stage I still expect Henry to play.
The problem children are Trent Boult and Mark Craig. Both will play and both are critical to New Zealand’s prospects. Quite simply if they deliver more of the same New Zealand cannot hope to win, but if they bowl as they are capable of then New Zealand are back in the game.
Boult obviously relies on finding swing for his success, and in striving too hard to do so in this series he has bowled far too loosely. He needs to align his ambition more closely to the prevailing conditions and find a drier length.
As many who have visited Australia before them have discovered, bowling at low 130 kilometres per hours in Australian conditions demands the tightest control over line and length. Anything less simply means a lot of fetching from the boundary.
Craig has been rubbished from pillar to post, and on the evidence of the first two Tests he can hardly feel aggrieved. Ronan O’Connell last week nicely outlined how Craig’s gentle finger spin does not provide sufficient dip in flight and bite off the pitch to trouble quality batsmen on these pitches.
New Zealand fans know that he is a better bowler than what he has shown so far but, again, he must look for a stock ball and bowl more patiently. It is almost excusable for a greenhorn leg-spinner to bowl half-trackers on both sides of the wicket, but not for an off-spinner with 44 Test wickets to his name.
The New Zealand bowlers have two more things in their favour. One is the pink ball, and if they were as underwhelmed by the prospect of playing with it as were the Australians a few weeks ago they now, sensibly, see it as an opportunity.
If it does nothing they are no worse off than where they were in the first two Tests. But if it does offer them something, then clearly they are the side with more to gain – accepting that Starc gets to use it as well.
At least fears of the pink ball not staying the distance and turning the match into a farce have been cleverly put to bed by the abject failure of the current red ball.
There is also the sense of a momentum shift due to changes in the Australian XI, forced by the injury to Usman Khawaja and the retirement of Johnson. Peter Siddle deserves his opportunity with the ball, his sole appearance in England was a success and he never lets his country down. But he is also unlikely to run through this New Zealand batting line-up should they approach him sensibly.
Perhaps outside of his direct family there is no love in the air whatsoever for Shaun Marsh and little confidence that he will contribute heavily with the bat. With Mitchell Marsh also struggling, there is a fragility to the batting order which suggests that, sooner or later, the run of 500-plus scores in the first innings is about to be ended.
That assumes of course that the New Zealand bowlers are still able to overcome David Warner and Steve Smith.
New Zealand’s other opportunity lies with the toss. McCullum has endured a horror run with the coin but if there is ever a time to turn this around it is now. Not only for the opportunity to take the initiative in framing the match and provide a platform for his bowlers to operate off, but also because of possibilities around the pink ball.
There are suggestions that this ball behaves differently at different times, and we can be sure that both captains have a gameplan which reads something like; win the toss, bat for five sessions, then get the opposition in for an evening session, just when the ball is likely to be dipping around.
To some extent New Zealand is onto a hiding to nothing in Adelaide. Lose and they head back to New Zealand having made false promises. Draw, and all they can do is to talk about under-preparedness and look to square the ledger on home turf after Christmas.
Win, and for many, it will all be because of the ball, and the raffle-like scenario this provides. Or it will be because the Australian selectors lost their senses when they chose Shaun Marsh.
But none of that is hardly news – it is rare for visiting teams to win in Australia on their own merits, with superior players, as opposed to some particular failing of the home side.
This is indeed an unusual Test match – historic because it heralds the (long overdue) arrival of day-night Test cricket, but unusual also because fans don’t quite know how they feel about it, thus highlighting the experimental or novelty aspect.
I suspect that come Friday in Adelaide, most of the negative talk and naysaying will have run its course, and both sides will enter the match in full Test mode, as if this was a typical day Test match.
It is an opportunity for many in the Australian XI to show that they belong in Test cricket. It is also an opportunity for this New Zealand XI to show that, Kane Williamson and Ross Taylor aside, there are other genuine Test cricketers among them, finally ready to deliver on Australian soil.
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