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Smithy’s Sermon: Time for Stead to make the big call and drop Southee as Blackcaps Test captain
Ian Smith • September 30th, 2024 9:50 am
He’s painted himself into a corner. He’s between a rock and a hard place. That’s where Gary Stead now finds himself after the Blackcaps fell to Sri Lanka by an innings and 154 runs to lose that Test series 2-0.
Silently, he might acknowledge it. Publicly, he can't. He has to stand by his players – effectively, he has to stand by his own selections, along with fellow selector Sam Wells.
What's even more obvious is he must stand by them, too, for the cricketing Everest that awaits him in India.
The only plus from a team perspective was the collective last innings performance in Galle, but the rest, for want of a better word, was galling. A mauling that was galling.
Are these our best players? Well, for the most part, yes. And they ready to play pretty much anywhere but the old backyard? It’s looking more and more like no.
This is the fruit of an unwillingness to foster the art of bowling or batting spin.
This is the pudding of putting all your eggs in the home basket, which is green seaming pitches.
Or maybe we are the silly ones and Daryl Mitchell was correct last summer in saying that the squad is not governed by outcome - it's reverberating back, isn't it? Certainly, at times the selection and the ongoing faith in players is also reflecting that.
We are all crying out for changes and have been for some time because this has been coming.
But it won't happen now either, because we're coming off a New Zealand winter and they'll certainly say no one else has really been playing any cricket. So, there’s no recent form to replace the incumbents.
Therein lies the challenge for Stead and Wells – they must have a group of players they’ve been following and earmarking for the future. That's part of their role.
Those players might not be ready, but they also might be. Let's see!
If Tim Southee is named captain for the three-Test match tour of India, that will be the clearest of all indications that Daryl Mitchell was right. As good as it's been for Tim, it's horses for courses and the subcontinent is not his surface.
About a decade ago, Mike Hesson made a huge call to replace Ross Taylor as the Blackcaps captain on the back of a Ross Taylor century and on the back of his success. They made the call back then after Taylor had done a pretty good job, particularly winning against Australia in Australia as captain.
If they can't make a call on Tim Southee for this upcoming tour to India, I just don't know. I simply just don't know.
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