Oram should retire, waste of space.
How is in horrendous form, had to go.
Agree with EG, how is Franklin not in the team but Gillespie is. Horrible stuff.
Beach cricket is great fun to watch though, Dion Nash takes the piss
Don't start me on Oram. His career has been badly mismanaged by NZ cricket (and particularly Bracewell). Trying to convert a powerful batsman who bowls bit into a bowling all-rounder was an incredibly stupid thing to do, and ensure that we never saw Oram play international cricket to his full potential regularly enough. Still think that when healthy, Oram's one of few genuine match winners we have, but his injuries have been taking too much toll. NZC and selectors have to leave him to get healthy before picking him, otherwise they won't have just screw up his career, but his post-cricket life too.
The point about How is, why drop him now? He had a poor time of it in Bangladesh and Australia, and not too flash against WI (other than a nice 54 in the second test). He was outperformed as an opener by Redmond in Bangladesh and Australia, yet How retained his place and Redmond was dropped. And now he gets a duck after playing a couple of promising innings, and all of a sudden gets dropped, and replaced by an opener in an ODI series that only has two games to go. I just don't get that.
As for Franklin v. Gillespie - Franklin's bowling is no worse than Gillespie's, and he's about 1,000,000,000 better batsman than him. No brainer really.
Oram's still rated by the ICC as the best ODI allrounder in the world. But he needs to take a LONG break and get right. Agreed Bracewell was a muppet.
Redmond was rubbish too, he had that 80-odd against Aus, but looked well out of his depth the whole series. Not sure McIntosh is the answer either.
I do rate How, but he had to be dropped, but agree with you that it should have been done ages ago.
If they are picking based on form, surely Bell and Sinclair have to be given a crack.
wingback4eva2009-01-09 13:01:00