Sunday 5 April 2009

A little trans-Tasman love

I want New Zealand to win.
In Australia, it is highly inappropriate to want New Zealand to win. We try to keep our neighbours firmly underfoot.
But it is even more inappropriate to want India to win, after the horrendous summer of monkeys. Although, deviating from the stereotype, most Australians supported the Indians then.

The fact is, though, New Zealand won't win this match. On the 3rd day of play, India are leading by 250 runs with 9 wickets to spare. Sehwag is out, but that's barely a dent in the Indian batting line-up. They're like zombies. You kill one, but then a new wave replaces it immediately. You can't fight the zombies.

Meanwhile, Gambhir is motoring away nicely.
Dravid has hit 9 off 59 balls. Don't even ask.
India will easily widen this deficit throughout the course of the day's play.
The best New Zealand can hope for is a draw, and even that will require marvellous feats of dead boring blocking and stalling at the crease.
But they won't win the match.

Nevertheless, in a show of much needed trans-Tasman love, I will support New Zealand to the end. The very end. So from this point on, I will only post about how NZ will win the match. And that's win, not draw.

Someone has to bridge the ties between our two countries.

2 comments:

Indophile said...

Summer of Monkeys that was fascinating don't you think ....what's the point of playing a test series with dripping love and affection...
And taking a high moral stand :-) thats our national hobby in India

Amy said...

It was. Peter Roebuck got particularly excited and started calling for sackings in the Aussie team.

But it was like some sort of strange stand-off out of a Western. India threatening to abandon, Australia freaking out and eventually complying, and the ICC just looking on.