Aussies too good

Let's be honest.   Are we really surprised that Australia coasted to a comfortable 6 wicket win last night in Hamilton?

Traditionally for NZ cricket teams to compete with Australia we need to have our best players on the park.  When you run through the list of absent players I think our expectations may be set a little high in this series - those off the top of my head I can think of are:  Ryder, Mills, Oram not to mention injury clouds hanging over Vettori and Taylor.

That's not to say we shouldn't expect a good performance and to be honest a couple of selection decisions have me scratching my head.   Firstly Mason, he has never set the world on fire and to be honest has only really helped opposition players increase their strike rates.  To me someone like Ian Butler who has performed well in domestic cricket and has international experience would have been a better option.   Peter Ingram athough exciting when he gets going has proven that against quality opposition he doesn't have neither the skill or the technique.  I do think he was worth a shot but we must now accept this is a failed experiment and bring back Lou Vincent who in my opinion should have been there from the start.

So we move onto Auckland this Thursday 2-1 down in the series.  A must win game and we need all our players to fire  (particularly the top order) or we could be in for another tough day.