New Zealand’s bowling against Australia looked very similar to their efforts against Scotland and England. The ball shot through the crease with marked swing. Bats were beaten, stumps were scattered, single-figure scores were marked as closed in the score book. Some late-innings biff dragged the total over three figures, but even then the batting side were scattered for 152.
For a while, New Zealand’s batting also resembled their efforts against England, when Brendon McCullum and Martin Guptill sent Steven Finn for 49 runs in two overs, in an assault so grievous you expected security to intervene. Later, New Zealand’s batting was a little more akin their display against Scotland, when they lost seven wickets in a stagger towards 143.
It was remarkable how each team mirrored the other, and how quickly their efforts changed. Australia began their innings with a welcome disaster from Tim Southee, who dished up a couple of wides, a three, a boundary, then a bouncer that cleared the keeper for four byes. Fifteen from the first over.
New Zealand began their innings with a welcome disaster from Mitchell Johnson, who bowled a no-ball first up that Guptill glanced for four, then was whacked over long-off for six from the free hit. Eleven runs from the first ball.
David Warner top-edged a pull for six over third man. McCullum edged over slip for four. Short boundaries and high run rates were the talk of the day. Then very quickly they weren’t. I was idly writing a note about how rude it was for Aaron Finch to hang on the back foot and drive a good-length ball on the up for six, when he tried it twice in a row and had his stumps destroyed. Third over. In the fourth over of the reply, Guptill failed to clear mid-off.
Runs kept coming. If I told you about Southee’s second-over peach to Finch, you would deem his opening figures inscrutable as Sumerian hieroglyphs: three overs, no maidens, one wicket for 32. Johnson, meanwhile, the Terror of England, spent several minutes setting up a leg-side field, then blasted a short ball at 150km an hour into McCullum’s elbow, raising a lump like a fat hamburger patty. Some minutes later McCullum had 50 from 21 balls, and Johnson’s four opening overs had gone for 52.
It was Bizarro Cricket, then it all fell apart. Australia 80 for one, New Zealand 78 for one, from which point neither doubled their score. Praise goes to the bowlers: Trent Boult’s five for 27 and Mitchell Starc’s six for 28 are hard to ignore. But there was a madness to the game that made those hauls possible, the wild-eyed approach of men too long in the desert who fancy they smell moisture.
Perhaps the Australians were seduced by the talk of short boundaries, with the pheromones from AB de Villiers’ demolition of West Indies drifting across the Tasman to rouse passions of attack. By press accounts the visiting side had spent their practice sessions driving balls into the stands, imperilling local pedestrians.
Finch was in that mode. Shane Watson has been caught at deep midwicket often of late, his shot usually travelling well in front of square and finding the lone fieldsman that sides routinely place for him.
Glenn Maxwell, Mitchell Marsh, Michael Clarke and Johnson were all out trying to force the ball away rather than playing straight and getting in. Seven wickets had fallen within 20 overs, it’s not like there was a shortage of time, yet they were caught at cover or bowled off the inside edge, so strong was their itch to move.
Chasing a small total gives the same feeling. An aggressive 30 can knock off a fifth of the required runs and set the momentum. Going slow has its risks should wickets fall. Being 120 for four after 15 overs is better than 50 for none. New Zealand took the former approach, and so returned memories of their Scotland game: seven down chasing 142.
Against Australia they managed 145 for seven, but still needed seven further runs to win. Even as Starc bowled vicious swinging yorkers, black-shirted tailenders tried to drive them and score. Two more sets of stumps were broken in that interim. Great tension fell over the ground, the sound of the jubilant and confident when those feelings have suddenly been removed, the vacuum that comes when facing the prospect of the fall. In the Rugby World Cup final of 2011, the same stadium fell to the same hush in the second half, as the French surged to within a point of the All Blacks. Defeat from a position of surety is by far the most undignified.
In the end, that indignity was spared. Starc, the destroyer who had nearly brought Australia the least likely of wins, still had an over unused. He was rested from the end of the 13th, when he’d had New Zealand 90 for four, until the start of the 19th, by which time they’d added 39. He knocked over three more and took it to the last pair, but it wasn’t enough. The Eden Park crowd breathed in relief at an escape that half an hour previously they would not have considered requiring.
