Fearing what Marcus Stoinis might do next after his antics in the first game, New Zealand organised for the second ODI of this series to be abandoned without a ball being bowled.
But they couldn’t contrive a way to repeat the trick for the third match, which therefore went ahead.
Here are the ratings for the third ODI between New Zealand and Australia.
Press conferences
Grade: D
New Zealand won the toss and chose to bat first. Tom Latham fell early, presumably thrown off by the fact that Glenn Maxwell had inexplicably shown up to question him at a recent press conference.
That’s Maxwell for you. Always thinking, always probing, always trying to influence games in exciting and unorthodox fashion. And if that means attaching himself to the press corps and troubling opposition batsmen with pointed questions, then that’s what he’ll do. But what will Maxwell try next?
Will he apply to become the Indian physiotherapist during Australia’s upcoming tour? Will the Ashes see him step forward as the third umpire, wielding Hot Spot in ways heretofore unseen? Will the next Chappell-Hadlee series feature Maxwell in the role of the trophy itself?
Nobody knows. Yet another reason why Glenn Maxwell is the most exciting cricketer in the world.
Ross Taylor and Dean Brownlie
Grade: B+
The early loss of Latham and the marginally less early loss of Kane Williamson saw Ross Taylor join opening batsman Dean Brownlie.
Taylor and Brownlie proceeded to put on a hundred run partnership from just 102 balls, a feat made all the more impressive by Brownlie batting while wearing a beard of bees. The pair’s quality display of traditional middle overs tedium set New Zealand up perfectly to amass a total in excess of three hundred.
And while Brownlie fell for 63, Taylor went on to make a century before finally being caught by Stoinis on the boundary for 107.
Curiously, Peter Handscomb reacted to Taylor’s dismissal by appearing to say ‘well batted’ to him as he left. This is the surest possible sign that Handscomb was merely a fill-in keeper for the tour – even more so than his refusal to call a single one of Adam Zampa’s deliveries ‘nice’.
Still, cut him some slack. Perhaps he was congratulating Taylor sarcastically.
“Yeah, Ross, reeeeally well batted, mate.”
Yes, let’s assume that.
Acceleration
Grade: B-
Unfortunately for New Zealand, the rest of their batsmen failed to build upon the partnership of Taylor and Brownlie, with the careful platform the pair had built collapsing like the end of a successful level of Donkey Kong. The Black Caps lost their middle order for just 33 runs between overs thirty and forty, ending with 9/281, and even that total was only achieved when fourteen runs came from the final three balls.
Still, it’s annoying how we always look at a team innings from the perspective of the batsmen, complaining about how the rest of the New Zealand side failed to accelerate after a solid third wicket partnership.
Why not look at it from the perspective of the bowlers for once? Couldn’t we instead say that James Faulkner and Adam Zampa consolidated the innings with a solid partnership of bowling, before Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood and Pat Cummins accelerated the wicket-taking at the back end of the innings?
Is that so hard?
Modular arithmetic
Grade: A
In pursuit of 282 for victory, Australia started well. Allan Border in commentary compared Aaron Finch to ‘a pocket battleship’, and if that’s not the single best predictive indicator of a successful run chase, I don’t know what is.
But Shaun Marsh, who most cricket fans had forgotten was playing, suddenly ran himself out for no immediately obvious reason. And then Handscomb followed two balls later for a duck, presumably because he thought that’s what wicket keepers do.
Australian stand-in captain Finch, meanwhile, was determined to be dismissed by his opposite number Kane Williamson. He eventually succeeded, caught on the boundary off the New Zealand skipper’s unthreatening spin bowling.
It was only when Finch returned to the dressing room that he awkwardly realised that Williamson’s number is 22, which is nowhere near the opposite of his number 5.
Oh, sure, 22 is the opposite of five in certain modular groups of order 27, but the only cricketer in the Australian team willing to deal in those kind of number systems is Maxwell. And he was immediately dismissed for a duck. So take that with a grain of salt.
Of course, the top order knew that none of these wickets mattered. They’d got Australia within 162 runs of victory. Plenty close enough for Stoinis to secure victory for Australia.
Or so you’d think. Instead, Stoinis fell for 42, still ninety runs short of the win, prompting many fans to question why young Marcus hates Australia so much. Two chances to win an ODI for Australia. Two failures. Time to bring back Mitch Marsh, I say.
Losing things
Grade: B+
Australia’s eventual defeat by 24 runs meant they had lost the following on this tour:
and
Good tour, lads.
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