Very excited to have a chat mate and hopin??g the side does us proud against the Indians!

On domestic cricket, I know you’ve come up against Graham Napier of Wellington this season, how close would he be to the England set-up ?

P.s. Keep those blogs coming!

Just wondering what is behind Greg Hay’s amazing fall from grace. In the last two domestic seasons he was arguably NZ’s best domestic batsman and was unlucky to miss out on going to England with the NZ side. Since he went to India with the NZ A side before this season started he has been in terrible form and has subsequently been dropped from the CD side.

Why has his fall from grace been so great and why hasn’t he been able to regain his form and force his way back into the CD side?

Cheers,
Mark

I do think NZ are a lot better in limited overs cricket than people give them credit for. They just need one player from their side to develop to really be a KP type player, either as batsman or bowler. A guy who can deliver the knock out punch on his own on his day… Add one such player, and your team is World Champion material, IMHO..

Also, great to see such a detailed analysis from a current ?player. Thanks a lot for th??e insights, Matt. Hope you keep these coming regularly. And hope to see you in the tests against India. 🙂

We basically let a lot of basic fundamentals slip ??away. We were in great positions to win a large proportion of t??hese games but either the pressure got to us or the opposition just batted and or bowled better than us.

One positive out of this whole campaign has been the ability that myself and Dermot Reeve can now look to shape a team over the winter and be ready for next year’s campaign. We are going into next year’s campaign not only with a view to win but also to pick specialist batsmen and bowlers for any situation. This game can be at times very hit and miss but teams are getting a lot smarter in their approach to it. At times from a captaincy point of view batsmen that are able to reverse sweep and lap the ball make tough decisions for me to set my fields. The next generation of batters will I believe become experts at doing this and exploiting different areas that batsmen rarely go to. Bowlers will have to master their slower balls and have the consistency to hit the block hole on far more occasions. Having the confidence to do this requires a lot of hard practice and commitment but I have found other teams doing this better than the Stags.

We are of course one of the better teams in New Zealand when all our Black Cap guys are back but we can’t rely on these guys to be around all the time. That is why it has been a great experiment sitting back and watching teams that are consistently doing well like Otago and learn from what they have done. Otago without a doubt is my team that will go through and win this competition and compete in the Champions Trophy, the balance of their team is spot on and the ease in which they chase and or set a score is far more superior than what I have seen from other First Class NZ teams.

We w??ill and have to get better in all facets of this game but we have still got a great chance to win the four day championship so our focus is now on that.

Until next time I value your comments and sorry that I can’t answer everyone’s questions that are put forward to me but I will look at something soon to have a chat on line and then you can start firing all your cricket questions at me.